[00:00.480 --> 00:05.020]  So, the subject of the talk I'm going to give tonight is, it's kind of a two-part thing.
[00:05.140 --> 00:08.840]  It's called Dirty New Media, Art, Activism, and Computer Countercultures.
[00:09.820 --> 00:25.320]  And so, kind of like broadly what I'm going to talk about is this kind of like wave in new media art that moves towards, instead of treating technologies as a kind of ideal, kind of treats them as complicated, qualified, kind of dirty, messy kind of things.
[00:25.320 --> 00:34.100]  And in taking that approach, how a lot of artists and hackers and activists are able to kind of blend the kind of divisions between those three roles.
[00:34.380 --> 00:36.520]  And really kind of embrace all three of those roles at once.
[00:36.780 --> 00:44.800]  And that this is something that's been happening since the 70s or, you know, more properly since the 60s in video art and conceptual art and in media art.
[00:46.140 --> 00:52.780]  So, this piece that's running right now is a performance by Morgan Higby Flowers and Brendan Patay.
[00:52.900 --> 00:56.060]  It happened in 2007 in Chicago at a space called Enemy.
[00:56.840 --> 01:05.680]  And Brendan and Morgan work with VCRs, like running into audio mixers and running into boomboxes and then back into other VCRs.
[01:05.760 --> 01:11.060]  They build these really kind of complicated systems out of basically signal flow.
[01:11.060 --> 01:16.200]  And kind of perverting the signal in different ways to produce these, like, really f*cked up effects.
[01:17.960 --> 01:24.780]  So, they're already kind of like working with, this isn't, you know, software art necessarily, but they're, they're working with, with systems or something.
[01:24.860 --> 01:26.080]  They're working with electronic systems.
[01:26.260 --> 01:31.880]  They're designed kind of from the ground up to be broken or in some other way kind of complicated or damaged.
[01:33.100 --> 01:41.760]  There's a, a writer and artist named Matthew Fuller that, that whose work is like kind of underpinning a lot of what's happening in this talk.
[01:42.380 --> 01:44.340]  And he, he writes a lot about software art.
[01:44.440 --> 01:51.000]  He used to work with a group called IOD that did a sort of series of like software zines that were released on floppy disk.
[01:51.000 --> 01:55.660]  Um, that did stuff like renamed all the files on your computer into poetry or something like that.
[01:55.740 --> 01:59.700]  Really kind of agro kind of punk, um, uh, kind of effects they had.
[01:59.800 --> 02:05.200]  They were, they were kind of like those disc releases, like early demo scene disc releases or something, but they were viruses or whatever kind of art viruses.
[02:05.780 --> 02:16.200]  Um, and so I want to just like go over a few things that Matthew Fuller brings up in a paper that he wrote that was published earlier this year in a book called Software Studies Lexicon.
[02:16.200 --> 02:23.820]  Um, the paper's called The Stuff of Software and it kind of functions as the introduction to the, um, to the collection that, that he edited, The Software Studies Lexicon.
[02:24.620 --> 02:29.180]  So he says two things in this introduction that are, that are, um, really kind of focusing for this talk.
[02:29.620 --> 02:40.500]  Um, the first thing is that software, and, and in this case I'd like to broaden our understanding of software in a kind of poetic way to kind of contain anything kind of systems-based that we're working on, anything where the system is the message or something.
[02:40.500 --> 02:47.380]  Um, so he says software comprises simply and grimly of a social relation made systematic and unalterable.
[02:48.060 --> 02:55.000]  Um, so what, what he's talking about here is, uh, where we take something that's like more properly kind of grounded as a social relationship.
[02:55.480 --> 03:01.440]  Um, this can be like the example that he gives is, um, something like the Israeli-Palestine conflict or something like that.
[03:01.500 --> 03:02.580]  This is like a social conflict.
[03:02.580 --> 03:13.460]  Um, and there are ways that when we're making software we make assumptions based on our positions in these social relations and kind of encode our positions into the system as fact or something.
[03:13.640 --> 03:27.520]  So, um, the example that he refers to is, um, like if you're signing up for a Yahoo email account or something and you have a drop-down list of what country you're from and you identify yourself as being a member of the nation of Palestine, but it's not an option in the drop-down list.
[03:27.760 --> 03:35.360]  So, at that point, um, it's exposed to you that this social relation has been kind of like codified into a system that you can't alter.
[03:35.620 --> 03:37.380]  Uh, into a system where you're disempowered.
[03:38.280 --> 03:44.160]  Um, and then another example that, that, that I like is, um, like the kind of gender binary male-female thing.
[03:44.240 --> 03:50.780]  This is on like every website, um, when you want to, when you are making a profile or something that's required for your gender and it's male-female.
[03:50.780 --> 03:54.480]  It's like either, you know, it's like an enumerated list or something.
[03:54.620 --> 03:57.920]  This is like an assumption that, um, comes up that's a social assumption.
[03:58.100 --> 04:02.960]  If you subscribe, like I do, to the gender being a kind of social construct or something.
[04:03.440 --> 04:10.220]  Um, it's a social assumption that comes out in a technical way when the developer's looking at, like, what's all the data I need to store?
[04:10.340 --> 04:11.900]  Well, okay, one thing is gender.
[04:12.060 --> 04:13.540]  And what data type is gender?
[04:13.660 --> 04:15.040]  Well, okay, it's binary or something.
[04:15.160 --> 04:16.640]  Or it's an enumerated list or something like that.
[04:17.140 --> 04:22.540]  Whereas if you're like, you know, if you're in that band Throbbing Gristle or something like that, maybe you consider it like a Spectrum or something.
[04:24.940 --> 04:32.440]  So another thing that Fuller says, this is like, so that's most software for Matthew Fuller, most kind of systems-based work for Matthew Fuller.
[04:33.160 --> 04:36.920]  But then there's another kind of like body of work that he's interested in that he's trying to push.
[04:37.440 --> 04:56.040]  He says, by contrast, when technology is used in a way that's, he uses this word interrogable, which really just means hackable or open to question, when technology is used in a way that's interrogable or hackable, it allows and encourages those subjects networked or enmeshed within it to gain traction on its multiple scales of operation.
[04:56.140 --> 04:59.760]  Okay, this is kind of art speak or something, but, or, you know, like philosophy speak or something.
[04:59.920 --> 05:13.660]  But all he's really saying is when the software is implemented as an incomplete project, in other words, when I'm going to, when I'm creating that like form for you to fill out to sign up for MySpace, and I say, you know, like, well, let's let the user choose the data type,
[05:14.220 --> 05:16.420]  or I say let's let the user add a field or something.
[05:16.660 --> 05:29.580]  When I leave it kind of open to question what the system actually is and kind of present it in that way, then that lets people like kind of take a position that lets people become empowered, you know, kind of sit within the system in a way where they have agency or something.
[05:31.100 --> 05:33.400]  So this were... Oh, actually this is kind of funny too.
[05:33.520 --> 05:35.980]  This is like video documentation of this performance.
[05:36.280 --> 05:37.880]  And like the DVD tape got eaten.
[05:38.060 --> 05:42.580]  So there's this whole other layer of like awesome kind of like f*cked up grid stuff happening on there or something.
[05:47.140 --> 05:58.300]  So, as an example of a kind of system that was built broken, or built open, or built open to question, or hackable from the start, I want to show another piece that's from the same screening.
[05:58.480 --> 06:04.300]  This was a screening called Real Time, or really kind of a night of performance called Real Time that happened in 2007.
[06:07.220 --> 06:08.460]  And this one does have sound.
[06:08.560 --> 06:09.000]  It's pretty loud.
[08:00.460 --> 08:12.180]  So, he actually went on and played for like another ten minutes, but basically what he was doing was he had a kind of video feedback set up with an old television that he was directly shocking with Taser, I think.
[08:13.020 --> 08:19.340]  So, and the kind of lifespan of the piece was until the television died or something like that.
[08:20.720 --> 08:31.380]  So, in this way, he kind of takes the television system, which is a system that we're really encultured to, and kind of aggressively turns it into a hackable system or something like that.
[08:31.460 --> 08:34.940]  It's in a kind of invasive, kind of playfully invasive way.
[08:35.740 --> 08:37.800]  There's another artist that I want to show now.
[08:37.940 --> 08:42.260]  This is an excerpt from a film by, you made a thing called Sans Soleil.
[08:42.420 --> 08:42.820]  It's from 1980.
[08:42.980 --> 08:43.580]  It's by Chris Marker.
[08:43.700 --> 08:55.800]  It's like a pretty famous kind of pseudo-documentary, where he's looking at, here, how people can take kind of political situations and kind of invasively hack them like that.
[09:01.480 --> 09:03.420]  Yau Yamanenko has found a solution.
[09:04.140 --> 09:08.600]  If the images of the present don't change, then change the images of the past.
[09:10.380 --> 09:13.900]  He showed me the clashes of the 60s treated by his synthesizer.
[09:14.500 --> 09:19.380]  Pictures that are less deceptive, he says, with the conviction of a fanatic than those you see on television.
[09:19.760 --> 09:27.460]  At least they proclaim themselves to be what they are, images, not the portable and compact form of an already inaccessible reality.
[09:30.420 --> 09:33.400]  Hayyau calls his machine's world, The Zone.
[09:34.020 --> 09:35.520]  A homage to Tarkovsky.
[10:18.540 --> 10:24.280]  What Narita brought back to me, like a shattered hologram, was an intact fragment of the generation of the 60s.
[10:24.820 --> 10:28.760]  If to love without illusions is still to love, I can say that I loved it.
[10:29.540 --> 10:31.980]  It was a generation that often exasperated me.
[10:36.890 --> 10:38.890]  So, yeah, I mean, does that make sense?
[10:39.050 --> 10:51.490]  It's like kind of looking at reality as something we can filter and process and integrate into another system and kind of open it up in a new way, opening up our relationship to mediated images or something in a way by kind of like, you know, with this tool,
[10:51.630 --> 10:57.430]  the zone, the synthesizer, or actually I think the zone is like the material that comes out of the synthesizer.
[10:57.430 --> 11:04.730]  But the synthesizer is kind of an artist-made tool, video synthesizer for reprocessing reality or for putting some filters on reality or something.
[11:05.710 --> 11:07.070]  It's also a name on the end?
[11:07.190 --> 11:09.470]  Yeah, it's called Sans Soleil, which is French.
[11:09.610 --> 11:10.870]  S-O-N, S-O-N, S-O-N.
[11:10.950 --> 11:11.890]  Here, let me put it up here.
[11:12.290 --> 11:13.130]  U-N-G.
[11:13.510 --> 11:14.030]  Yeah, sorry.
[11:14.930 --> 11:15.370]  Oh, wait a second.
[11:17.210 --> 11:18.150]  Oh, I'll make that.
[11:18.270 --> 11:18.490]  Oh, sans.
[11:18.750 --> 11:19.770]  Yeah, it's French.
[11:30.860 --> 11:32.020]  And it's by...
[11:39.200 --> 11:44.160]  So these video synthesizers are really kind of interesting, too, because they're...
[11:44.820 --> 11:47.380]  they often kind of function as artworks in themselves.
[11:47.580 --> 11:48.980]  You know, they're like highly stylized.
[11:49.140 --> 11:57.160]  They're talked about in a really kind of interesting stylized way by the artist developers, the artist hardware hackers or artist programmers or something that build them.
[11:58.080 --> 12:01.440]  And one of the kind of early video synthesizers is...
[12:01.440 --> 12:02.660]  Or one of the kind of...
[12:02.660 --> 12:11.600]  The kind of most popular early video synthesizers is by this guy from Chicago, Dan Sandin, who worked then and still does at the Electronic Visualization Lab at UIC.
[12:12.200 --> 12:18.840]  He built a machine called the Sandin Image Processor that was similar as like an analog computer for doing video signal processing.
[12:18.840 --> 12:19.520]  It was really cool.
[12:20.120 --> 12:25.780]  He worked with Phil Morton a lot, who's like a video artist and activist from the 70s.
[12:25.780 --> 12:27.620]  Or, you know, he hit a long career.
[12:28.140 --> 12:28.580]  But...
[12:29.180 --> 12:31.180]  So, I want to show a piece from...
[12:31.180 --> 12:35.060]  An excerpt from a video by Phil Morton called General Motors.
[12:35.920 --> 12:36.660]  Which is...
[12:36.660 --> 12:37.960]  You can find it on Google Video.
[12:39.020 --> 12:40.440]  We've uploaded it to Google Video.
[12:40.620 --> 12:42.300]  And it's super crazy.
[12:42.520 --> 12:43.680]  Like, you should really check it out.
[12:43.880 --> 12:47.340]  This excerpt shows a kind of walkthrough of...
[12:47.340 --> 12:49.100]  There's a little bit of the Sandin Image Processor in it.
[12:49.160 --> 12:51.460]  But it's mostly about this kind of like programming interface.
[12:51.460 --> 12:54.220]  And I think the one they're using in here is GRASS.
[12:54.540 --> 12:57.480]  Which is the graphics subsystem or something.
[12:57.620 --> 12:59.560]  You know, we know what they really mean.
[12:59.680 --> 13:03.160]  But it's like this kind of programming interface for doing graphics.
[13:03.360 --> 13:08.500]  That actually the Death Star sequence in A New HOPE was developed by Larry Cuba using this interface.
[13:08.680 --> 13:08.700]  Right?
[13:09.280 --> 13:09.460]  You know?
[13:09.880 --> 13:10.680]  So, yeah.
[13:10.720 --> 13:12.840]  Many Bothans died in the production of this film.
[13:15.640 --> 13:19.440]  To give you a little cook's tour of this laboratory in the chemistry department.
[13:20.240 --> 13:22.120]  We'll take you over the computer here.
[13:22.840 --> 13:25.700]  This single bay houses the graphics computer.
[13:26.680 --> 13:30.160]  And this down here, of course, is the PDP-1145 computer.
[13:30.500 --> 13:34.460]  Behind this panel is 28,000 words of memory.
[13:37.460 --> 13:46.200]  This here is the disk drive, the mass storage medium we use to hold pictures and macros and other information used to run the graphics system.
[13:47.440 --> 13:54.000]  Up here is the A to D converters, which allow us to use dials and knobs and sliders and other things to control images.
[13:57.150 --> 14:00.370]  Some of the computer's memory go wires that go over to the vector general.
[14:01.530 --> 14:07.810]  And as you can see, the vector general is capable of putting up images in real time, rotating them around.
[14:08.150 --> 14:10.430]  What we do there is point TV cameras at them.
[14:11.830 --> 14:16.790]  Little TV cameras like this, which you can move around and center and get different parts of the screen.
[14:17.330 --> 14:28.070]  And then, because color is much more fun than black and white, we run cables over this way to a very colorful person, Dan Sandin, inventor of the image processor.
[14:29.410 --> 14:41.790]  Now, the basic way we do things here is that we take images from the vector general, route them via cables to the image processor, colorize them, and tape record them.
[14:42.030 --> 14:47.870]  Now, the single thing that's hardest to communicate in a paper like this is the interactivity of the system.
[14:49.190 --> 14:55.770]  For instance, anything that can be controlled in this system can be controlled through the use of slide potentiometers or dials, like these.
[14:58.610 --> 15:02.310]  What we're going to do now is show you how we make up simple objects like this.
[15:03.650 --> 15:09.010]  But first, you can see the room lights reflecting in the screen, so we normally work with the room lights off.
[15:10.950 --> 15:12.130]  Then we turn up the colors.
[15:15.330 --> 15:17.410]  The room lights are actually still off.
[15:17.590 --> 15:19.950]  What we've done here is put up some infrared lights.
[15:20.210 --> 15:32.410]  And CrossEye over there has an infrared-sensitive camera, so we can show you the working environment of the room while we're actually doing things and still get high-quality video without the room lights.
[15:32.890 --> 15:36.650]  The regular TV cameras are not sensitive to infrared light.
[15:38.230 --> 15:43.370]  First thing we have to do to show you how we make this little flying starch molecule is to restart the system.
[15:46.420 --> 15:50.540]  We're also superimposing the VTO5's type on the screen.
[15:54.060 --> 15:55.800]  We get the starch molecule up.
[15:57.920 --> 16:03.850]  And we get the propeller from the disc.
[16:06.050 --> 16:08.870]  The first thing anyone does with propellers is rotate them.
[16:15.250 --> 16:16.970]  But that appears to be the wrong axis.
[16:21.110 --> 16:27.510]  So there's something kind of interesting happening there when they've got the code superimposed over the output of the code or something.
[16:27.730 --> 16:32.490]  And he's kind of walking through the code in this very open kind of way or something.
[16:32.590 --> 16:34.110]  I mean, it's kind of a how-to video or something.
[16:34.270 --> 16:37.530]  But it's also this thing that's very popular right now.
[16:37.530 --> 16:38.750]  It's called live coding.
[16:39.710 --> 16:41.550]  And I'll show you a little bit of...
[16:41.550 --> 16:43.530]  I'm going to mute it because the music is...
[16:44.450 --> 16:45.350]  Anyway, I'm going to mute it.
[16:45.950 --> 16:46.310]  But...
[16:48.130 --> 16:49.010]  Whoops, not that one.
[16:49.790 --> 16:50.150]  Sorry.
[16:50.970 --> 16:52.090]  That one has great music.
[16:56.990 --> 16:59.010]  Okay, so this is a tool called Fluxus.
[16:59.370 --> 17:02.870]  And this is taken from a kind of workshop about how to use Fluxus.
[17:03.110 --> 17:03.930]  Fluxus is like...
[17:03.930 --> 17:05.430]  Yeah, so it's this live coding tool.
[17:05.550 --> 17:06.110]  There's a bunch of them now.
[17:06.110 --> 17:07.970]  Super Collider is a really popular one.
[17:08.890 --> 17:11.210]  And they're performance tools.
[17:11.710 --> 17:13.110]  But this group of people...
[17:14.170 --> 17:16.010]  There are some kind of live coding.
[17:16.170 --> 17:17.390]  There's Top Lap as a group.
[17:17.550 --> 17:18.490]  It's kind of an artist collective.
[17:18.810 --> 17:19.870]  They're all into live coding.
[17:20.030 --> 17:21.090]  And they have these kind of...
[17:21.090 --> 17:23.550]  They're very kind of Dogma 95 or something like that.
[17:23.610 --> 17:25.670]  They have these rules about how it has to go down.
[17:26.210 --> 17:29.890]  So one thing that has to happen is that you have to have your process...
[17:29.890 --> 17:31.610]  You have to be writing all the code while you're performing.
[17:31.870 --> 17:34.310]  And you have to have your text editor or whatever displayed.
[17:34.310 --> 17:37.470]  So Fluxus is a VJ tool, basically.
[17:38.150 --> 17:40.690]  And it's designed in the same way as...
[17:40.690 --> 17:41.990]  Grass, if that was grass.
[17:42.030 --> 17:42.690]  I think it was grass.
[17:43.950 --> 17:47.250]  So the code is getting edited on top of the thing.
[17:47.370 --> 17:48.050]  And the code is actually...
[17:48.050 --> 17:51.630]  It's kind of interesting in a stage way.
[17:51.830 --> 17:56.010]  I mean, the code is actually in front of the VJ stuff that's happening in the background.
[17:56.170 --> 17:57.830]  So the code is really kind of in the foreground.
[17:58.350 --> 18:00.210]  That's a kind of openness...
[18:00.730 --> 18:04.190]  There's a kind of ethics of open source around a lot of contemporary media art.
[18:04.610 --> 18:05.670]  Not all of it, but a lot of it.
[18:06.150 --> 18:10.730]  So I think that's maybe where some of that kind of ethical impetus to do this is coming from.
[18:10.950 --> 18:21.390]  Some of it is also this kind of performance of mastery of being super awesome at writing scheme code really fast to like get a crazy spider torus doing some super tripped out shit.
[18:22.390 --> 18:29.210]  And then Fluxus also takes audio input so you can sync it to like cheesy dance music if you want to.
[18:33.270 --> 18:33.870]  Yeah.
[18:34.990 --> 18:35.490]  I don't know.
[18:35.590 --> 18:36.250]  This is not that bad.
[18:36.510 --> 18:37.350]  It's a little distracting.
[18:42.210 --> 18:42.810]  Yeah.
[18:43.870 --> 18:51.210]  So one thing that is different about the approach of something like grass or the zone or the...
[18:52.050 --> 18:54.550]  Sandin IP or Fluxus is...
[18:55.150 --> 19:01.630]  There is like a part of the app that's like, you know, kind of compromised in an artistic way or something.
[19:01.730 --> 19:02.950]  I kind of put it into an artistic content.
[19:03.090 --> 19:04.130]  But they're mostly just tools.
[19:04.370 --> 19:07.930]  And they're often kind of talked about and critiqued strictly in terms of being tools.
[19:08.410 --> 19:10.310]  But in this kind of...
[19:10.310 --> 19:21.730]  The way that I want to talk about dirty new media art, the way that I want to talk about that category of art, is that there is not a distinction made between tools and, you know, the output of the tools or something.
[19:21.950 --> 19:26.110]  In other words, people often talk about software as...
[19:26.110 --> 19:30.010]  About the ideology, the prevailing ideology of software as being kind of utilitarianism.
[19:30.310 --> 19:32.810]  You know, we think of software as a black box or something.
[19:32.970 --> 19:36.270]  We think of software as a processor or something like that.
[19:36.510 --> 19:39.870]  In other words, software is something that you do input to and you get output from.
[19:39.870 --> 19:41.430]  It's completely utilitarian.
[19:42.550 --> 19:52.210]  And for this category of dirty new media, I'd like to think of a kind of more expanded, you know, there's a way in which software functions ideologically in a kind of utilitarian mode.
[19:52.430 --> 19:55.150]  But there's also like all kinds of weird shit happening at the edges.
[19:55.310 --> 19:58.850]  There's like a lot of literary stuff happening in like Microsoft Word or something.
[19:59.210 --> 20:03.210]  You know, there are like real decisions being made about the language that's used there.
[20:03.730 --> 20:09.810]  There's like, you know, user interface design is, you know, kind of being talked about often as a fairly precise science.
[20:09.870 --> 20:11.210]  But there's some voodoo in there, too.
[20:11.470 --> 20:14.370]  And there's some cultural assumptions that bubble up in user interface design.
[20:16.530 --> 20:34.150]  So, there are some artists working now that are really focused on that, like really focused on taking kind of software applications that are not meant to be art, you know, not meant to be used to make art or something, and making art from them or making them into art in the same way and in this kind of like DADA ready made sense.
[20:34.150 --> 20:40.050]  You know, the same way that, like, Marcel Duchamp takes a urinal and puts it in a gallery and calls it the fountain or something like that.
[20:40.750 --> 20:45.690]  In a similar kind of way, this is a piece by Jody, which is a duo Dutch artists.
[20:46.890 --> 20:49.330]  This is a piece called My Desktop.
[24:06.930 --> 24:08.210]  Yeah, they're great.
[24:09.110 --> 24:10.390]  That was... I'll just put it up here.
[24:11.070 --> 24:11.930]  That was Jody.
[24:12.290 --> 24:12.650]  Whoa.
[24:13.810 --> 24:16.090]  And their website is Jody.org.
[24:17.090 --> 24:19.510]  And that piece is called My Desktop.
[24:21.570 --> 24:28.850]  They have a kind of, in the kind of net art, you know, new media artwork, they have a kind of canonical piece that's something called Wrong Browser.
[24:30.170 --> 24:36.850]  You know, this comes from the late 90s where there was this, like, construct of, like, you're using the wrong browser or something that was, like, really part of the web.
[24:38.030 --> 24:39.190]  Anyway, that's a good piece.
[24:40.130 --> 24:45.930]  So, here's another piece that's along very similar lines by an artist named John Satram, who lives in Chicago.
[24:47.490 --> 24:48.890]  This is called ROM Zero.
[24:52.120 --> 24:57.700]  Information can also be added to automatically appear whenever you create a purchase order or enter a purchase for the vendor.
[25:27.860 --> 25:30.890]  Clicking an area on the navigation aid takes you to that window.
[26:59.730 --> 27:03.150]  When you want to enter information...
[27:11.330 --> 27:15.330]  So, there's another thing that comes up in those last two pieces, especially in John's work.
[27:15.930 --> 27:18.430]  It's this kind of, like, it's, like, super playful, right?
[27:19.050 --> 27:22.910]  And it has, like, a real strong kind of relationship to video games and video game culture.
[27:23.090 --> 27:25.570]  Like, that was, you know, he used Second Life to construct that piece.
[27:25.890 --> 27:26.950]  Or, you know, for parts of it.
[27:27.090 --> 27:30.390]  He also, the part where the deer is, like, jumping up on that platform.
[27:30.790 --> 27:36.410]  John does a lot of work with this game development tool in OS X called, like, Power Game Builder or something like that.
[27:36.410 --> 27:43.390]  And making these kind of crazy platform games out of elements from user interfaces and, like, ridiculous animated GIFs he finds online stuff.
[27:43.670 --> 27:50.730]  So, the kind of playful thing is also, like, a really powerful tool, as I've seen it employed in this...
[27:50.730 --> 27:52.270]  Again, what I'm talking about is Dirty New Media.
[27:53.050 --> 27:59.450]  It's, like, it functions as a really powerful tool for kind of, like, cutting across hierarchies or kind of, you know, cutting across all these different...
[27:59.450 --> 28:02.710]  Like, when Matthew Fuller talks about there's all these different layers at which software is operating.
[28:03.050 --> 28:06.210]  There's, like, ideological layers, that economic layer and stuff like that.
[28:06.410 --> 28:14.670]  And, you know, for him it's really important to, like, when critiquing software or when critiquing the media to come at it, you know, as, like, a very multi-layered thing or something.
[28:14.910 --> 28:20.150]  So, this playfulness can just really slice through all those different layers and, like, you know, cut them all open at once.
[28:20.310 --> 28:29.370]  It's kind of like in, you know, like the carnival or something like that, you know, that's kind of all about flattening hierarchies just for a night or something, you know, in a playful way.
[28:30.730 --> 28:46.870]  And so that relationship to video games and game culture and play and stuff is kind of where I'm going to try to connect this stuff with the demo scene, which I don't think I'm going to show, or I'm not going to show too much of it because I think it's probably something that a lot of people here are familiar with.
[28:47.430 --> 28:53.690]  And if, you know, if you're not familiar with and you want more information, you should look up, like, you know, Jason Scott is here.
[28:53.790 --> 28:55.950]  He knows, like, you know, he's done a lot of, like, historical work on that.
[28:56.110 --> 28:59.910]  And also Jim Leonard has done a lot of, like, collecting old demo scene stuff.
[29:00.270 --> 29:06.510]  But basically, the kind of beginnings of the demo scene were in pirating video games.
[29:06.730 --> 29:18.030]  So, like, you know, I've cracked, like, a new floppy of Super Off-Road, and I want everybody to know that it was my crew that cracked it because we're the leadest shit on the block.
[29:18.510 --> 29:21.530]  So I'm going to put some sweet banner, like, up in front of it, you know?
[29:21.890 --> 29:27.610]  And then, like, you know, after a while, it was like, well, I need to make a lot of shoutouts and I'm kind of running out of space.
[29:27.670 --> 29:31.990]  So maybe if there's a way I could animate all my shoutouts because I have, like, 700 shoutouts.
[29:33.470 --> 29:43.210]  So what kind of grew out of that is this kind of, like, form of having these awesome animations that play in front of the games that you crack when you redistribute them.
[29:43.510 --> 29:49.090]  And then there's also these interesting technical restrictions because, you know, some of the games, maybe they do, like, a checksum or something.
[29:49.350 --> 29:52.890]  Or maybe they, maybe there's not very much room left on the disk anyway.
[29:53.050 --> 29:56.010]  So maybe you're limited to, like, 4K for your code or something.
[29:56.230 --> 30:02.210]  So then you get to be super elite because now you can make this crazy graphical intro and you only used 4K of code or something.
[30:02.410 --> 30:05.150]  Anyway, that's the kind of, like, you know, kind of history, the origins of the demo scene.
[30:05.290 --> 30:07.510]  I'm just going to show one crack intro.
[30:07.670 --> 30:08.410]  This is from 1990.
[30:08.510 --> 30:10.010]  This is by a group called Paradox.
[30:10.150 --> 30:11.150]  I'm going to just kind of look at it for a second.
[30:21.190 --> 30:23.210]  Which I... I picked this one because it was dirty.
[30:26.610 --> 30:27.890]  Anyway, I think you get...
[30:28.710 --> 30:31.730]  There's more of this kind of, you know, really playful stuff going on here.
[30:33.650 --> 30:36.270]  And it's still, you know, part of the demo scene now.
[30:36.410 --> 30:38.130]  There's, like, a lot of, a lot of play happening there.
[30:38.550 --> 30:40.190]  Which, which I think is about...
[30:42.710 --> 30:44.710]  Which I think is about the demo scene.
[30:45.390 --> 30:47.790]  It's, you know, it's not, it's not, like, directly...
[30:47.790 --> 30:49.750]  Or, you know, it still has some ties to software piracy.
[30:49.950 --> 30:50.710]  And there's still, like...
[30:50.710 --> 30:55.730]  There's still an art scene and an ASCII scene, especially, for doing info files for pirated software.
[30:56.430 --> 31:01.690]  But, but, you know, it has a pretty, pretty robust relationship to the rest of the kind of software world.
[31:01.690 --> 31:03.250]  To the rest of the new media world at this point.
[31:03.710 --> 31:11.830]  You know, there's, like, all this stuff where graphics card companies get, you know, really lead demo coders to do their graphics for the new NVIDIA card or something like that.
[31:13.450 --> 31:25.190]  So, I think the playfulness is there now, still, and was there in the beginning to kind of, you know, help connect this kind of, like, grassroots digital artwork that was happening in front of the stuff.
[31:25.190 --> 31:33.110]  It's kind of, like, illegal, you know, by illegal, you know, that kind of includes, like, marginalized, you know, this kind of marginalized work that was happening.
[31:33.290 --> 31:38.870]  To kind of cut through that into the body of the rest of the kind of software or art, stuff or digital art that was happening or something.
[31:40.430 --> 31:43.430]  I don't know if I should show this or not, but yeah, I'll show it.
[31:44.670 --> 31:53.030]  At the last Block Party, you guys know Block Party, which is, it's like a demo party competition thing in Cleveland.
[31:53.450 --> 31:54.650]  This was the second year.
[31:54.790 --> 31:56.930]  It's attached to Notacon, which you guys probably know Notacon, at least.
[31:57.490 --> 32:01.510]  And Jason Scott and Radman from Acid, like, organized it.
[32:01.730 --> 32:11.790]  So I work with this group called Critical Artwear, and we're like kind of an artist collective concern, art historical concern.
[32:12.310 --> 32:17.470]  And we went, like, two years ago, and we made a demo, and it was like, we got a last place, which was pretty sweet.
[32:17.710 --> 32:24.270]  And then we went again this year, and we made another demo that I'm going to show you.
[32:25.130 --> 32:33.870]  And we were hoping for last place, but we actually just got disqualified, which is not quite what I was going for, but
[33:19.710 --> 33:23.910]  there's more.
[33:24.970 --> 33:29.370]  I think, you know, they have a really nice machine for the competition to show.
[33:29.530 --> 33:33.390]  It's like a SLI, NVIDIA, you know, dream machine.
[33:33.750 --> 33:37.410]  It doesn't run very well on my laptop, but it probably would have run really well on that one.
[33:38.170 --> 33:41.030]  Yeah, it was just a bunch of f*cked up stuff with windows bouncing all over the place.
[33:42.950 --> 33:50.450]  And that video that was playing in the beginning was Jason Scott dancing in front of our demo from the year before or something.
[33:53.710 --> 33:56.130]  Wow, I just, I think I crashed GNOME with our demo.
[34:01.010 --> 34:01.670]  Yeah, really.
[34:02.770 --> 34:04.690]  Yeah, I mean, you know, it runs in Windows, too.
[34:05.030 --> 34:06.130]  It runs in Vista.
[34:06.270 --> 34:07.110]  It looks great in Vista.
[34:10.750 --> 34:12.430]  Wow, I don't really know what to do about that.
[34:13.070 --> 34:13.390]  Dan.
[34:13.870 --> 34:14.790]  Dan, yeah, right.
[34:16.030 --> 34:16.390]  Cool.
[34:17.410 --> 34:23.790]  Well, I'll tell you what, there's, there's, there's one more piece that I want to show, but I guess I have to reboot.
[34:24.030 --> 34:26.750]  So maybe what I'd like to do since we, sorry?
[34:28.210 --> 34:31.130]  Yeah, you know what, I disabled that because I always hit it on accident.
[34:33.010 --> 34:35.730]  But actually, I can't even get to the, the virtual consoles.
[34:36.150 --> 34:37.230]  Oh, yeah, there we go.
[34:46.430 --> 34:46.930]  Thanks, dude.
[34:47.030 --> 34:47.690]  I appreciate that.
[34:47.790 --> 34:48.330]  No problem.
[34:48.490 --> 34:49.790]  We just qualified you for a reason.
[34:52.750 --> 34:53.030]  Cool.
[34:54.210 --> 34:56.830]  So I guess what I'd like to do is, like, try to reboot this.
[34:57.010 --> 34:59.850]  And, you know, we still have, like, maybe 15 minutes or something.
[34:59.910 --> 35:02.010]  So maybe I could just take questions and then reboot it.
[35:02.050 --> 35:03.850]  And then I just want to show you this one other piece.
[35:05.990 --> 35:07.090]  Oh, yeah, cool.
[35:12.330 --> 35:19.230]  So, yeah, do you guys have any, any questions or thoughts or anything like that?
[35:20.530 --> 35:20.890]  Yeah.
[35:21.110 --> 35:22.010]  Why'd you get disqualified?
[35:23.610 --> 35:30.450]  You can ask Jason about, I mean, I think it was, you know, I mean, well, they said it didn't work, okay, at first.
[35:30.670 --> 35:32.870]  But, and, you know, and I was like, well, yeah.
[35:33.190 --> 35:36.110]  And then they were like, they said it was also too hostile.
[35:36.770 --> 35:38.390]  And, you know, that's fair.
[35:38.550 --> 35:39.070]  I don't, I don't know.
[35:39.590 --> 35:40.270]  Oh, cool.
[35:40.470 --> 35:40.570]  Yeah.
[35:41.370 --> 35:42.570]  Yeah, let's talk about it, dude.
[35:44.390 --> 35:44.790]  Awesome.
[35:44.990 --> 35:45.690]  Let's have it now.
[35:46.570 --> 35:48.690]  It was awesome to do it during the event, too.
[35:49.430 --> 35:49.830]  Okay.
[35:50.050 --> 35:50.170]  Cool.
[35:50.770 --> 35:51.350]  All right.
[35:52.430 --> 35:52.970]  Hi, everyone.
[35:53.110 --> 35:53.790]  I'm Jason Scott.
[35:54.770 --> 35:59.510]  I run a party called Block Party at Not A Con, which is an excellent con held out in Cleveland, Ohio.
[35:59.510 --> 36:03.730]  We're having another one next year in April of 2009.
[36:04.270 --> 36:11.010]  Anyway, so one of the things that Block Party is, is it's based off of a kind of a European demo party where there are various demos that are shown.
[36:11.290 --> 36:14.030]  There's also music pieces, graphics pieces.
[36:14.150 --> 36:15.170]  In other words, kind of an art show.
[36:16.290 --> 36:24.950]  And what we encountered, well, the first time we saw their work from the first one, we simply assumed it was some sort of prank.
[36:26.270 --> 36:26.770]  That's fair.
[36:26.950 --> 36:29.450]  And that's one of those things that can really be interpreted.
[36:29.790 --> 36:37.630]  You see, the, like, if you have, if you're having, if you're having a music contest and someone comes over and shits in the tuba.
[36:40.930 --> 36:42.230]  And, and defecating.
[36:42.370 --> 36:43.950]  That's that Deshaun piece I was talking about.
[36:44.210 --> 36:44.430]  Yeah, exactly.
[36:45.070 --> 36:49.430]  So, you know, and he goes, oh, no, no, no, that's sunset in B flat.
[36:51.290 --> 36:55.630]  The judges have to make the decision whether or not it will change the tenor.
[36:56.390 --> 37:07.610]  So anyway, so when the second one came and it opened up multiple windows on the desktop and then started to act really weird and sent out a noise that would kill a chicken.
[37:08.650 --> 37:14.310]  We had to make the decision of whether or not we wanted to play that over a multi-thousand watt system at people.
[37:17.050 --> 37:24.090]  But actually, to bring it back to his beautiful talk here, that's part of the problem when you kind of stretch the boundaries of what is art and what is music.
[37:24.090 --> 37:27.150]  And sometimes you will just not be appreciated.
[37:27.750 --> 37:36.890]  Dali was considered a pretty weird out ignored person until he had a fight over a placement of some art in his gallery and he threw a bathtub through a window.
[37:38.090 --> 37:44.250]  The resulting press from that got a lot more interest in his surrealist work before then and was part of his road to success.
[37:44.490 --> 37:47.330]  So what I'm telling them is that they should throw a bathtub through the window.
[37:48.210 --> 37:48.690]  Anyway.
[37:48.910 --> 37:49.090]  Cool.
[37:49.390 --> 37:50.110]  Thanks for the input.
[37:50.350 --> 37:51.150]  Oh, no problem.
[37:56.630 --> 37:57.130]  That's true.
[37:57.210 --> 37:59.730]  That thing about multiple windows, we were like, oh, we're pushing something.
[38:00.050 --> 38:00.510]  You know?
[38:00.750 --> 38:02.070]  We're doing something with this.
[38:02.330 --> 38:02.490]  I know.
[38:04.270 --> 38:04.630]  Okay.
[38:05.030 --> 38:05.650]  Thanks, Jason.
[38:06.650 --> 38:07.010]  Okay.
[38:07.610 --> 38:14.470]  So I'm just going to show this one other piece and then it's quarter till maybe we'll have time for like just a couple questions or something.
[38:14.650 --> 38:15.230]  Or maybe not.
[38:15.230 --> 38:15.610]  I'm not, you know?
[38:15.670 --> 38:15.750]  I'm not sure.
[38:16.930 --> 38:17.750]  I'm not sure.
[40:42.600 --> 40:43.800]  I'm not sure.
[40:47.840 --> 40:47.860]  Um.
[42:19.450 --> 42:21.610]  So, I Love Presets is a, oh, sorry.
[42:22.610 --> 42:23.130]  Congratulations.
[42:23.690 --> 42:27.130]  You have been selected to receive two free iPod Nanos.
[42:28.570 --> 42:30.510]  I Love Presets is a trio.
[42:30.770 --> 42:36.350]  It's John Satcher, when we showed that ROM Zero video, and Jason Soliday and Rob Ray.
[42:36.730 --> 42:41.410]  And so Rob Ray and Jason Soliday are sound artists and they're working with like a lot of circuit vent equipment.
[42:41.410 --> 42:45.350]  And then John does the video and then he does some sound stuff sometimes.
[42:45.790 --> 42:50.490]  So he uses some circuit vent video equipment that's like, that he's built.
[42:50.750 --> 42:55.690]  And then also like one of the things we saw in that video was a kind of prepared Excel spreadsheet.
[42:55.850 --> 43:01.610]  Actually, I think it was like an open office spreadsheet, but you know, kind of prepared so he could just scroll through it and it would do those weird interference patterns with that stuff.
[43:01.750 --> 43:06.910]  And then he was using a little bit of the, you know, expose stuff like Jody used in the video.
[43:08.890 --> 43:09.270]  Okay.
[43:09.270 --> 43:09.330]  Okay.
[43:09.650 --> 43:10.890]  So we're just a little bit of time.
[43:11.010 --> 43:12.570]  Maybe we can do like one or two questions.
[43:13.410 --> 43:13.790]  Yeah.
[43:13.850 --> 43:13.950]  Good.
[43:15.870 --> 43:17.770]  They wanted me to remind you to use the microphones.
[43:17.930 --> 43:18.950]  Is there like a mic around?
[43:19.050 --> 43:19.510]  Oh, in the back?
[43:19.890 --> 43:20.650]  You're right there in the middle?
[43:20.730 --> 43:21.590]  Just a quick comment.
[43:21.950 --> 43:22.310]  Oh, yeah.
[43:22.670 --> 43:23.670]  Just a quick comment.
[43:24.310 --> 43:29.150]  Can I buy that from the Apple iPhone store?
[43:29.210 --> 43:31.810]  Oh, are you asking me if the Python...
[43:31.810 --> 43:34.370]  Oh, if my demo runs on the iPhone?
[43:34.750 --> 43:35.110]  Yeah.
[43:36.650 --> 43:37.790]  That's a really good question.
[43:38.970 --> 43:42.390]  I don't have an iPhone, but yeah, I don't see why not.
[43:42.670 --> 43:43.530]  I don't see what...
[43:44.450 --> 43:44.750]  Yeah.
[43:45.690 --> 43:46.050]  Did...
[43:46.910 --> 43:47.270]  Sorry.
[43:50.330 --> 43:50.890]  He not.
[43:51.110 --> 43:51.830]  Oh, yeah.
[43:52.110 --> 43:58.830]  It's kind of funny to hear software to be described as something that's a rigid when in a lot of ways, it's one of the more malleable forms of media we ever had.
[43:58.830 --> 44:02.750]  I completely recognize the kinds of constraints and ideologies that you're talking about.
[44:02.970 --> 44:15.970]  And I'm wondering if it's helpful for you or have you thought about software being compared more to architecture as a system of building things that recognizes the ideologies and economies and layers that are implicit in the kinds of things that we're creating.
[44:16.350 --> 44:16.810]  Cool.
[44:16.910 --> 44:16.990]  Yeah.
[44:17.050 --> 44:18.230]  I like that way of talking about it.
[44:19.010 --> 44:24.210]  And I like what you said about thinking of software as being malleable versus...
[44:24.210 --> 44:27.450]  You know, because that is another way that software is talked about very often.
[44:27.590 --> 44:27.650]  Yeah.
[44:27.730 --> 44:28.810]  It's about being super malleable.
[44:29.050 --> 44:32.250]  And also the kind of output of the...
[44:32.250 --> 44:36.210]  You know, when we talk about malleability in software, we're kind of talking about two stages, right?
[44:36.250 --> 44:38.710]  We're talking about the stage where you're coding it or architecting it or something.
[44:38.790 --> 44:40.030]  We're talking about the stage where you're using it.
[44:40.710 --> 44:45.950]  And at both of those stages, there is like a kind of tension between malleability and rigidness.
[44:46.050 --> 44:46.130]  Yeah.
[44:46.130 --> 44:54.150]  So what you're saying about architecture is that you think that where architecture is at now is that it's dealing with all these layers in a kind of qualified way or something?
[44:54.430 --> 45:00.570]  Well, to the extent that software is being used to create environments nowadays that mediate human-to-human interactions.
[45:00.570 --> 45:03.670]  I mean, that's a domain that's been well understood and regarded.
[45:03.890 --> 45:12.090]  So the notion that software architecture is beginning to resemble traditional architecture as a leading art is sort of the way I've been trying to think about it lately.
[45:12.090 --> 45:12.710]  Yeah, cool.
[45:12.910 --> 45:23.750]  And there are a lot of architecture projects that are more on the art side that we could really look at in terms of opening up our thinking to kind of making really radical software architecture right now.
[45:23.870 --> 45:28.610]  There's like the Bucky Fuller stuff that's kind of radical and interesting.
[45:28.970 --> 45:29.930]  But then there's also...
[45:29.930 --> 45:32.230]  Oh, we're at the Whitney right now for anyone who's in town.
[45:32.530 --> 45:34.310]  Yeah, a whole show on Buckle.
[45:35.430 --> 45:35.970]  Okay, thanks.
[45:38.750 --> 45:39.350]  I don't know.
[45:40.090 --> 45:41.230]  How are we doing on time?
[45:43.150 --> 45:43.590]  What's that?
[45:44.770 --> 45:45.950]  Okay, like, yeah, like one more?
[45:46.570 --> 45:46.930]  Okay.
[45:49.110 --> 45:51.770]  What's a good live coding framework for people who don't know Lisp?
[45:52.030 --> 45:52.910]  Who don't know Lisp?
[45:53.030 --> 45:53.210]  Yeah.
[45:53.430 --> 45:53.570]  Yeah.
[45:54.250 --> 45:56.310]  You know, I've used SuperCollider a bit.
[45:56.490 --> 45:57.070]  It's pretty weird.
[45:57.250 --> 46:01.550]  It's like, it's kind of like small talk or something.
[46:01.670 --> 46:03.030]  Or that's kind of his legacy.
[46:03.030 --> 46:04.430]  I don't know if it's like really...
[46:05.090 --> 46:07.410]  I don't know how good a reference that is practically or something.
[46:08.030 --> 46:09.930]  And then there's Chuck, which is pretty cool.
[46:10.710 --> 46:12.030]  Chuck uses like a...
[46:13.230 --> 46:14.670]  It has all these operators and stuff.
[46:14.830 --> 46:16.390]  It's like, it's kind of more of like a...
[46:16.390 --> 46:20.910]  It's a little more procedural or something than, you know, Lisp, which is really functional declarative.
[46:21.010 --> 46:22.450]  It's like a little more procedural imperative.
[46:22.890 --> 46:25.670]  So, which actually, you know, works pretty well in a live coding context.
[46:26.250 --> 46:28.890]  And then a lot of people work with Python, actually, in live coding.
[46:29.010 --> 46:29.790]  And JavaScript, too.
[46:30.210 --> 46:31.970]  You can do, like, yeah, the cool...
[46:31.970 --> 46:43.750]  Because you can run, you know, like, you can use like jQuery or some other kind of JavaScript framework to just make these like interesting animations in the browser using like Firebug or something, you know, where you have an interactive JavaScript interpreter.
[46:44.310 --> 46:47.750]  You can make, yeah, you can do performances in there, playing QuickTime files and stuff.
[46:47.790 --> 46:51.670]  So, to do stuff with Python, people just like use Pygame and Pyglut and...
[46:52.490 --> 46:52.730]  Yeah, yeah.
[46:52.730 --> 46:54.330]  Because you can run all that stuff from the interpreter.
[46:54.330 --> 46:54.730]  Right.
[46:54.990 --> 46:55.070]  Yeah.
[46:55.290 --> 46:55.630]  Okay.
[46:55.750 --> 46:55.870]  Totally.
[46:56.990 --> 46:57.430]  Yeah.
[46:58.410 --> 46:58.670]  Okay.
[46:58.810 --> 47:00.690]  Maybe, I think we have another minute or something.
[47:02.230 --> 47:02.670]  Yeah.
[47:13.610 --> 47:14.050]  Okay.
[47:14.390 --> 47:17.190]  It was except for...
[47:17.190 --> 47:17.570]  Saint Soleil.
[47:17.870 --> 47:18.170]  Oh, okay.
[47:18.350 --> 47:20.190]  Where are the other activist connections or something.
[47:20.390 --> 47:20.590]  Yeah.
[47:20.790 --> 47:21.070]  Okay, cool.
[47:22.670 --> 47:30.890]  Well, I think one way is, I think the act of like the kind of flattening hierarchies, that kind of like impulse is an activist impulse or something.
[47:31.310 --> 47:45.150]  In terms of like on the streets kind of work or something, the project that I was doing at Daisy Chain, which is that free computer lab or something that I was running, was kind of approaching computer education as a place to experiment with kind of radical arts education.
[47:45.850 --> 47:48.110]  And so that was kind of an activist intent.
[47:48.290 --> 47:54.250]  Also, this fellow, Matthew Fuller that I referenced like several times throughout the talk, is like this super hardcore Marxist.
[47:55.110 --> 47:59.750]  And he's... and like a lot of his stuff is about, you know, he talks a lot about the streets.
[48:00.310 --> 48:06.250]  He talks a lot about thinking about how, you know, he has this kind of construct of street smarts or something.
[48:06.250 --> 48:14.490]  Street smarts in that kind of like, kind of like tactical stuff or something like, you know, like this tactical strategic dichotomy or something.
[48:14.610 --> 48:18.650]  Street smarts is like being a kind of bottom up grassroots radical practice or something.
[48:18.850 --> 48:24.330]  So he talks about how can we take our street smarts, you know, how can we take that and live that way on the web or something.
[48:24.790 --> 48:30.330]  Or, you know, which the, you know, web is kind of the focus in the mid-90s of like this dialogue about software.
[48:30.830 --> 48:33.590]  And this kind of critical dialogue about software.
[48:33.670 --> 48:36.010]  Now we can talk about a lot of applications in that way.
[48:36.070 --> 48:40.910]  How can we take our street smarts and apply them to our relationships with software or something?
[48:43.670 --> 48:44.030]  Cool.
[48:44.250 --> 48:44.410]  Okay.
[48:44.610 --> 48:45.090]  I think that's it.
[48:45.150 --> 48:45.630]  Thanks a lot, guys.