ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (2)
BIO
Rob Myers is an artist and hacker based in the UK.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
Re: -empyre- in jan06: Computational Poetics
On 1 Jan 2006, at 20:36, Dirk Vekemans wrote:
> Otherwise the complete absence of poetics might also be the key
> condition
> for any formula of poetical engeneering to work.
As with politics, there's no such thing as the absence of poetics.
I like the idea of poetics engineering. Like psychohistory or psyops
for experience.
- Rob.
> Otherwise the complete absence of poetics might also be the key
> condition
> for any formula of poetical engeneering to work.
As with politics, there's no such thing as the absence of poetics.
I like the idea of poetics engineering. Like psychohistory or psyops
for experience.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Rhizome re-design
On 21 Dec 2005, at 21:20, Plasma Studii wrote:
> (and yes, count me in, applauding rhizome's great new design.)
Yes it's great. I'm not 100% sold on the rhizome background image,
but maybe it will grow on me. Or around me, in all directions.
- Rob.
> (and yes, count me in, applauding rhizome's great new design.)
Yes it's great. I'm not 100% sold on the rhizome background image,
but maybe it will grow on me. Or around me, in all directions.
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: NYT art critic reviews Pixar exhibition at MoMA
On 17 Dec 2005, at 16:08, Gregory Little wrote:
> Rob, your description of the process of making tron is fascinating.
The two-disk DVD set has lots of documentaries and preparatory work
on the second DVD, which goes into all the making and design in
detail. I do recommend it.
> However, where I find tron to be most successful is in the development
> of a formal aesthetic for inhabitable digitality.
Yes, it's a wonderful aesthetic solution to a social problem (the
impact of computer technology). Very Adorno. :-)
> So much of pixar relies entirely on a pre-impressionist aesthetic,
> it is
> as if cubism,
[Mr. Potato Head rearranges his facial features crazily]
Mr. Potato Head: Hey, Hamm. Look, I'm Picasso.
Hamm: I don't get it.
Mr. Potato Head: You uncultured swine.
> futurism,
I'd wanted to do a futurist CG movie for ten years now. You could use
a modified voxel system to get that vortex effect.
> duchamp, etc etc etc never happened--for obvious
> reasons.
Imagine a Pixar Duchamp movie. Perhaps it was "Geris Game"? :-)
- Rob.
> Rob, your description of the process of making tron is fascinating.
The two-disk DVD set has lots of documentaries and preparatory work
on the second DVD, which goes into all the making and design in
detail. I do recommend it.
> However, where I find tron to be most successful is in the development
> of a formal aesthetic for inhabitable digitality.
Yes, it's a wonderful aesthetic solution to a social problem (the
impact of computer technology). Very Adorno. :-)
> So much of pixar relies entirely on a pre-impressionist aesthetic,
> it is
> as if cubism,
[Mr. Potato Head rearranges his facial features crazily]
Mr. Potato Head: Hey, Hamm. Look, I'm Picasso.
Hamm: I don't get it.
Mr. Potato Head: You uncultured swine.
> futurism,
I'd wanted to do a futurist CG movie for ten years now. You could use
a modified voxel system to get that vortex effect.
> duchamp, etc etc etc never happened--for obvious
> reasons.
Imagine a Pixar Duchamp movie. Perhaps it was "Geris Game"? :-)
- Rob.
Re: Re: Re: Re: NYT art critic reviews Pixar exhibition at MoMA
On 17 Dec 2005, at 12:53, patrick lichty wrote:
> Honestly, Tron was better, and still is.
This is a very interesting argument and one that I do agree with.
It's not just nostalgia. I have just bought the deluxe Tron DVD and
the thing that strikes me about it is the technical incompetences and
intellectual failures of the project *that make it an aesthetic and
critical (discursive) success*.
If you know even the smallest amount about computers, Tron's script
is nonsensical. If you know even the smallest amount about film
production, Tron is a train wreck. Yet it resonates and represents
very successfully as a finished work.
Tron is problematic and carries a high risk of failure yet is an
aesthetic and contentual (to make up a word) success. Is this
Bourriaud's realisation of new technical content in an old medium?
Well, no. Both backlit animation and computer graphics were rocket
science at the time.
And Tron was also much harder work than a Pixar movie. The backlit
animation was hand-painted and hand-composited onto film stock
specially manufactured by Kodak just for that film. The computer
animation was rendered a frame at a time by animators keying hundreds
of numbers into a teletype connected to a server over a phone line.
By four different companies with incompatible software (some were CSG
based, some mesh-based, and so on).
I like "Toy Story" and "Monsters Inc", and I think it is wrong to
discount the creativity of the individuals that worked on those
projects in favor of grant-funded discourse illustrators.
My pitch to students seduced by the surfaces of what Pixar does would
be this:
Yeah it looks good. Now imagine making *art* with those tools.
http://www.renderman.org/
- Rob.
> Honestly, Tron was better, and still is.
This is a very interesting argument and one that I do agree with.
It's not just nostalgia. I have just bought the deluxe Tron DVD and
the thing that strikes me about it is the technical incompetences and
intellectual failures of the project *that make it an aesthetic and
critical (discursive) success*.
If you know even the smallest amount about computers, Tron's script
is nonsensical. If you know even the smallest amount about film
production, Tron is a train wreck. Yet it resonates and represents
very successfully as a finished work.
Tron is problematic and carries a high risk of failure yet is an
aesthetic and contentual (to make up a word) success. Is this
Bourriaud's realisation of new technical content in an old medium?
Well, no. Both backlit animation and computer graphics were rocket
science at the time.
And Tron was also much harder work than a Pixar movie. The backlit
animation was hand-painted and hand-composited onto film stock
specially manufactured by Kodak just for that film. The computer
animation was rendered a frame at a time by animators keying hundreds
of numbers into a teletype connected to a server over a phone line.
By four different companies with incompatible software (some were CSG
based, some mesh-based, and so on).
I like "Toy Story" and "Monsters Inc", and I think it is wrong to
discount the creativity of the individuals that worked on those
projects in favor of grant-funded discourse illustrators.
My pitch to students seduced by the surfaces of what Pixar does would
be this:
Yeah it looks good. Now imagine making *art* with those tools.
http://www.renderman.org/
- Rob.
Re: NYT art critic reviews Pixar exhibition at MoMA
If MoMA are just presenting Pixar as a gee-whizz cash cow blockbuster
show (as it sounds they are), then I agree that it is bad. Museums in
the UK are starting to do that sort of thing as the funding dries up.
But please don't throw the Pixar baby out with the MoMA water. Rent
the 2-disc version of The Incredibles and watch the documentaries.
Consider the finished film as a competent cultural product. And take
a look at http://www.renderman.org/ .
As artists we can learn a lot from Pixar. And there is content to
their films, as much as to any non-cultural-studies-academic art.
And, if you want to go the subtext route or look at the argument over
how nietzschean The Incredibles is, there's probably more.
- Rob.
show (as it sounds they are), then I agree that it is bad. Museums in
the UK are starting to do that sort of thing as the funding dries up.
But please don't throw the Pixar baby out with the MoMA water. Rent
the 2-disc version of The Incredibles and watch the documentaries.
Consider the finished film as a competent cultural product. And take
a look at http://www.renderman.org/ .
As artists we can learn a lot from Pixar. And there is content to
their films, as much as to any non-cultural-studies-academic art.
And, if you want to go the subtext route or look at the argument over
how nietzschean The Incredibles is, there's probably more.
- Rob.