[x] 185 screenshots from Aleph Null 2.0

Graeme McCaig r.graeme.mccaig at gmail.com
Mon Nov 7 15:21:40 CST 2016 

Thanks for the great response, Jim! I'll 'pm' you...

--Graeme

On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 1:19 PM, Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com> wrote:

> 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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