[x] 185 screenshots from Aleph Null 2.0

Jim Andrews jim at vispo.com
Mon Nov 7 15:19:58 CST 2016 

On 11/7/2016 10:56 AM, Graeme McCaig wrote:
> Hey Jim,
>
> I have a philosophical question for you:
> Do you consider Aleph Null (the system) as "an artwork"?
> Or would you only call the images it produces the art?

Hi Graeme,

I've been creating things that are both tools, to some extent, and works 
of art, also, for some time. Such as dbCinema. And The Pen. And Jig 
Sound. And Nio. These works are more interesting as works of art than as 
tools. So too with Aleph Null, I think. In a good tool, almost none of 
the content is pre-ordained. In Photoshop, for instance, or Word, the 
software is not generative of the content, normally. It simply helps you 
create and process the content. Also, Word and Photoshop are not about 
the creation of a new form of art. Users of that software may indeed 
create new art with the tools, but they could as well do it without 
software or without those specific pieces of software.

The content in Aleph Null is more pre-determined. Most of the nibs have 
very specific looks. Specific to the Aleph Null software. Though I do 
want to implement, for instance, the ability to use your own images in 
the nibs that process a folder of bitmaps.

The ability to produce interesting stills/screenshots is important in 
Aleph Null, but color music is in a flow of time, not simply a still. 
The color music is in the animation.

Aleph Null is mainly toward the creation of color music. Which, itself, 
is not a new concept. Actually it goes back to Arcimboldo in 1590, at 
least, as described in 
http://vispo.com/alephTouch/docs/AlephNull2NFB.pdf 
<http://vispo.com/alephTouch/docs/AlephNull2NFB.pdf> . But it's a 
particular form of color music. Any particular instrument of color music 
tends to produce a certain relatively circumscribed stylistic range of 
works of color music. Which, in total, are the main work of art the 
software produces. Similarly, in my stir fry texts at 
http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts , you can read a stir fry for twenty 
minutes and get the feeling that you don't need to read any more of the 
exceedingly numerous permutations; you've read it after you get a sense 
of the original texts and how they stir together. The 'poem' produced by 
a stir fry text is the total set of permutations, not a particular one 
of them.

Also, the stir fry software is itself a work of art, I would say. Same 
with the Aleph Null software. For the above reasons. But the set of 
possible works of color music producable with Aleph Null is bigger than 
the set of texts producable with a stir fry, normally.

I remember seeing an interview of Stanley Kubrick, who was asked about 
his approach to directing films. He said that he tried to attend to all 
the dimensions of the film. It's visuality. It's story. The dialog. And 
so on. All the dimensions. That's basically my approach to the creation 
of the online interactive art I make. I've spent a long time not only on 
the drawing algorithms--although they could still use a lot of work--but 
on the interface, concept, design, and code of the controls. If you try 
it out on mobile, you see the controls work quite well with touch and 
are a big part of the look. I want the experience of using Aleph Null as 
an instrument of colour music to be satisfying, exciting, transporting. 
It has some distance to go, admittedly. But it's on the way.

Revealing the controls gradually, one by one, as the player learns what 
the controls do, will help with the experience. That will sort of 
'narrativize' the experience, or at least one-thing-after-anotherize it.

I've also spent a lot of time on making the experience doable on the 
net. It works on all the browsers and platforms I test it on. I know net 
art has been more or less abandoned. But it's still important to me. 
It's a global beacon of alterity and individuality.

Also, I'd like to implement a 'gallery mode'. Currently it only has an 
'interactive mode'. By default, it would display 'gallery mode' in which 
it would display varietously without the player having to play it. When 
a player touches it, it would switch from 'gallery mode' to 'interactive 
mode'. And when the player has finished playing it, it would go back 
automatically, after a couple of minutes, into 'gallery mode'. In 
'gallery mode', it would play playlists of configurations. A playlist 
will be a list of configurations. A configuration will be a particular 
setting of all the controls. Interactive mode will contain a feature 
whereby players can save configurations and string them together to form 
playlists. Implementing 'gallery mode'+'interactive mode'+ finger 
painting will make it quite attractive on big touch screens and, 
hopefully, make it attractive to galleries and possibly being able to 
sell installations of it.

This email is already too long. I'll stop here. Yes, let's get together 
for a coffee. Backchannel me at jim at vispo.com

ja

>
> Also--
> do you want to get a coffee or whatever and chat sometime?
>
> cheers
> Graeme
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 10:58 PM, Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com 
> <mailto:jim at vispo.com>> wrote:
>
>     A slideshow of 185 screenshots from Aleph Null 2.0:
>     http://vispo.com/alephTouch/slideshow
>     <http://vispo.com/alephTouch/slideshow>
>
>     Compare them with 200 screenshots from Aleph Null 1.0:
>     http://vispo.com/aleph/jim
>
>     You can also play with the machines themselves, if you want, here:
>
>     Aleph Null 1.0:
>     http://vispo.com/aleph/an.htm
>
>     Aleph Null 2.0:
>     http://vispo.com/alephTouch/an.html
>     <http://vispo.com/alephTouch/an.html>
>
>     The main idea in both of the machines is that a brush has a
>     configurable "central color". Dominant color. And, also, each
>     brush has a configurable "color range". The smaller the color
>     range, the closer all the colors the brush draws are to the
>     central color. The greater the color range, the more colors the
>     brush draws. In Aleph Null 1.0, you can only have one brush at a
>     time. In Aleph Null 2.0, you can have as many brushes as you want.
>     The drawing algorithms are a bit more accomplished in Aleph Null
>     2.0; the brushes have more interesting transparency/alpha and they
>     draw more smoothly. Also, Aleph Null 2.0 has many more selectable
>     nibs for a brush, and some of those nibs are dbCinema-ish in that
>     they use images as paint, not simply color/gradient. Also, Aleph
>     Null 2.0 works well on mobile.
>
>     Here is a doc I wrote about Aleph Null 2.0 that was recently
>     rejected by the NFB. It outlines further features I'd like to add
>     to Aleph Null. Possibly 3.0. If I can:
>     http://vispo.com/alephTouch/docs/AlephNull2NFB.pdf
>     <http://vispo.com/alephTouch/docs/AlephNull2NFB.pdf>
>
>     ja
>
>
>
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