Hypothete

Create your own art movement!

2012-02-01T22:35:00.002-06:00

I've made a website where you can directly contribute to the next big art movement! Click here to add your input. We'll regroup in a week or two to discuss the results!

New site - brushes

2012-01-19T18:44:00.002-06:00

I wasn't feeling great today, so I stayed home from work and finished up a recent project: brushes. brushes is a webpage where you can use images from URLs as paintbrushes. You paste a URL into the top left field, then start doodling on the page, stretching copies of the image as you go.* The site lets you output the placement of the images as HTML/CSS once you're done, so you can use brushes to draft compositions for your own sites. Here is an example output (also in the screenshot above). It's a real hack of a tool, but it's definitely way more open-ended than some of my other compositional sites. Major props once again to timb for bon.gs, the definitive compositional website.**

*PROTIP: broken URLs are fun.

**sorry framit fans

Edit: another example pic. 3

On sharing

2012-01-12T16:43:00.001-06:00

Hits on the blog since 2010. No need to alert Cory A. about the new post.

I miss the old Internet ways sometimes because things made more sense. Before the rise of DRM, streaming media, and "maintained identities," it was easier for us all to see that the underlying structure of the web was just files linking to other files. I remember wondering in the early 2000s if we would always have to download shared files and programs off of "ugly" hyperlinks, rather than being able to click through directly to the experience. Nevertheless, I was thankful that the links were there in the first place, so I could download that content for later use. I still have in my possession MIDIs and Pokemon GIFs I saved in 1999 from a few generous sprite-ripping websites (shut up, I was 10!).

Nowadays it can be easy to lose sight of that elegant simplicity because it's been so carefully disguised, for better and for worse. Not that the web isn't improved by the existence of streaming media and the magic of style sheets, but too much of the illusion causes us to forget what makes this mode of communication so great: sharing data.

The illusion of the web caught up to me several months ago, when I was going through a creative slump. At the tail end of the Rotors project, I was writing and thinking a lot about formal qualities of what I was calling "conglomerate" digital media, like websites (since in actuality websites are made of multiple files). I kept churning out rotors, but I felt like I was stagnating and I wasn't getting hardly any feedback from friends or acquaintances on the series. Why make net art if not for other people to look at it? I became concerned that I had chosen a format (HTML + CSS & JQuery) which, although web-native, was too "loaded" in its formal qualities to be approachable. I then began to try and evaluate other popular formats, such as files (GIFs, JPGs, HTML) in order to determine what might be a better direction for me to take.

This landed me in a huge mess, because once you start trying to figure out which formats are "relevant" and "valid," you will never escape. I stopped making sites, GIFs, everything. I went back to art history books and read abysmal histories. Then I just gave up and started playing Minecraft.

Attempt at irony, problematizing the game element.

Apparently I chose the right game for an art block. Have you seen what people build in there?! You might think an in-game computer built out of torches would be practical, but trust me, it's anything but. This got my brain going about "virtual media" - media contained within a specific digital context. For Minecraft, the medium would be the blocks that make up the world. For something like dump.fm, the virtual medium would be the limits o the post format (x characters long, text and image files only of certain scales). You can even look at Facebook posts in this way. Was the difference between Facebook-based art (has a provided context) and my HTML experiments (context-free) what was keeping me from reaching people? Was I wrong to distrust a provided context? Is the lack of context what continues to doom physical presentation of digital files? I spent my time making concessions and their associated tumblr skins, only to hate them. I thought I was getting close, but something still felt wrong.

Finally, a late-night wander through some long-forgotten haunts on the web lifted the veil for me. The problem wasn't the context, the virtual medium or the validity of the format. In the end, it's all data. In the end, it's the sharing that counts. What you share goes before how you share it. I had to - have to - rethink what I'm sharing and why. So I will.

Tonight and Tomorrow: Notes on a New Nature

2011-11-10T18:06:00.001-06:00

I have a piece in an exhibition tonight by Nicholas O'Brien entitled "Notes on a New Nature." The theme of the exhibition is the effect of the Internet on contemporary depictions of landscapes. You can read more here, and Mr. O'Brien will be giving a streaming walkthrough at 3PM EST tomorrow here.I hope you take a look!

UPDATE: O'Brien recorded a Notes on a New Nature virtual "hike" through the exhibition at 319 Scholes: click here to watch. I had only seen a couple of these works before, was totally bowled over by the video and show overall.

If I were a curator

2011-10-06T18:23:00.000-05:00

A few ideas for digital art group shows/locations:

"Photo blankets" group show. Photo blankets are like $100-150 to have manufactured, so not a huge risk for participating artists. And you get a blanket!
Salon-style projections of GIFs covering walls. I'm thinking something like ITP's Big Screens projects but lots of little images. Horror vacui. Who was it that said GIFs are only good in groups?
No Computers Allowed: all physical artifacts of digital works. Artists must translate by any means necessary.
Icon Show: Group of artists makes physical work based off of their favorite computer icons. I'm imagining big butterfly collection-type displays.
Offline Store: Store that sells different mass-produced net art objects every month (like photo rugs, USB drives, etc.). Takes out the middleman - no need to copy the original when you can send the file to the manufacturer. Artists may not have say as to how their work is displayed.
Net art fashion? I think there's more up this vein than just what PBS tells you. Pepper from Scannerjammer has been making some cool shirts, and I know we have a few other merch pushers waiting in the wings.
Bigass lenticulars/holograms - one day, Joel!
OS: operating system-themed works. I have at least two large works planned for something like this, just need a wealthy, loving patron. Reach me at hypo@hypothete.com!

Couple of new pages

2011-10-02T10:43:00.001-05:00

Dumped Images Page 5

Dumped Images Page 6

Expansionism (resize the page)

SEPTEMBER UPDATES

2011-09-08T18:16:00.002-05:00

New work online: let's start with Rotor 62, a scooting robot I built for the Minnesota Opera! More pics and a video here.

SUPERSTIJL - I took GIFs and still images from various sources and turned them into palette scrolling images. I then finally reduced the images to only five colors - red, yellow, blue, black and white. This is where the dumb art history reference comes in, but I liked the effect enough to group them on a page. Epileptics beware (as always).

Sliders 1 and 2. Maybe trying to be funny, maybe something about resizing algorithms? 2 holds my interest the most, but sometimes I've found myself opening 1, adjusting until I'm comfortable, and then leaving it open in a tab as I surf. Not sure what that means.

Finally, this isn't so much an art thing as a browser thing - LET'S ROLL. For bloggers or tumblr-rs that need cycling text-shadows on their non-IE-compliant pages. The code is commented.

Hypothete at Art Fag City: Ki[net]ic Reflections

2011-09-02T16:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally wrote that kinetic art post I was talking about! It's taken a few weeks and some great editing work (major kudos to Will Brand & Paddy Johnson) but now I think we're ready to start off the discussion. Take a look, and feel free to discuss over on the comments section at AFC.

Experimental Display Roundup

2011-08-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

This is a roundup of experimental display technologies I've been exploring on Youtube. I shared some of these links on dump and facebook recently, but in order to better collect my thoughts in one place I thought it would be worth the time to compile them as a post.

Analog Process

2011-07-31T16:14:00.000-05:00

One of my interests that I don't talk about a lot on the blog is human color vision. Cones, the cells that detect color, do not simply pick up red, green and blue. It's more like this:

thanks, Wikipedia

...where 700nm is pure red, and 400nm is deepest violet. Two things I find interesting about this are 1. we see that certain colors and combination of colors "peak" in perceived intensity, and 2. there is a high degree of redundancy between cones, that is your red cones pick up some orange, yellow, green etc. This redundancy gives humans an advantage over modern digital cameras when it comes to color vision: we can see a wide range of wavelengths, whereas cameras rely on the RGB color model. This means that certain color phenomena such as fluorescence cannot be photographed, only seen.

Guessing from my previously paragraph, you can probably see where I'm going: I've been working with highlighters fairly intensely for the past month, but they don't photograph well. I'm sharing anyway.

All of these drawings are fairly small. After recruiting some volunteers this afternoon (thanks frakbuddy and weh) I tried a larger drawing today, and I'm pleased with the result:

webcams, 36"x12", highlighters on gesso/MDF

Be Thoughtful

2011-07-26T06:48:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Google. New pages:

I need to post some new writing soon! As those of you who follow my Twitter account might know, I recently discovered at the library some books detailing the history of kinetic art from this guy on. Seems to me that when the art world encountered the Duchamp situation in the 20s that there was some sort of schism, driving some artists towards meaning and and the object, and others toward a study of space-time. There seem to be a lot of gaps in the literature, so once I have a clearer picture I'll draft something.

no surprises here

2011-07-13T18:48:00.000-05:00

CHATS ARE BACK

2011-07-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

Tabbed browsing is pretty hot, too.

ASK any young net artist today "what's hot on the net," and they will tell you "CHATROOMS." Remembered for their infamy and inanity in the days of AOL, chatrooms were a staple of the web until some unspecified date in the mid-2000s. The two places that you could go to share your thoughts in realtime with friends and complete strangers were either AOL Instant Messenger or the wild landscape of IRC, Internet Relay Chat. I personally hold fond memories of discussing videogame programming with teenagers from eastern Idaho at two in the morning, back in 2003. When the web made its big semantic jump from "me-specific" to "you-specific" back around the mid 2000s, we searched for truth in spite of our companions, and the chatroom fell from glory.

With the rise of Chatroulette and dump.fm in November 2009, the Internet was proven to be growing weary of the predictability of Web 2.0 and searching for a more meaningful social existence. Facebook and other social networking sites had demonstrated to the constituents of the web the gestalt nature of humans in conversation, and a need had arisen. The missing ingredient to this return to social existence was speed. People want to share and hear thoughts - in realtime!

But the tired forms and emoticons of old proved to be insufficient.Several services are now quickly growing that prompt not only new forms of discourse (such as the aforementioned sites, scannerjammer, tinychat, and turntable) but also allow for a person's login to grow a history and personality in the forms of logs, "likes," "DJ points," and "favs" - generally, a rewards system. This encourages the user, and prompts them to put more energy into the strength of their interactions. All in all, a community benefits everyone involved.

Pictures from BYOB

2011-07-02T13:03:00.001-05:00

More under the cut!

Rotor 52 (yours truly)

"AAAA" projection by collective thisiswe


thisiswe's kaleidoscope projector

feedback loop projector

GIF art by Ted ___

this rotated very, very slowly within the rectangle. Almost nauseating, quite good.

"out of towners" wall

Alexandria McCrosky from Computers Club

Francoise Gamma

I did not get many people's names, so if you see work here that you either recognize or made yourself, please add a note in the comments. Thanks!

Happy Customers

2011-07-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

highlighter and white-out on paper

Duh - Rotor 52

2011-06-23T18:16:00.000-05:00

Also, totally forgot to post a video of my device for the show Saturday. Here it is:

Links Roundup - 6/23/11

2011-06-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

modernist overtones

stay relevant

divination

divination 2

seam

maleficent

Unrelated: BYOB Minneapolis info

Also: A Really Long and Intense Argument about the Martha Graham Google Doodle from Last Month (hence the Google repurposing in the first two links)

Quite a run! Feelings were hurt, names were called, straw men depilated. Shows that the scene still has passion for all the running in place that we do. I love you guys!

BYOB Minneapolis Preview

2011-06-09T07:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday, June 25th / 9 p.m. / Free

Thorp Building
1620 Central Avenue NE
Minneapolis

Details to follow on the project(or)!

~~~~~~

2011-06-04T22:10:00.002-05:00

New pages

2011-05-28T09:46:00.001-05:00

I've had a bunch of pages sitting in my directories without links on the public pages. This is now fixed:

2011 misc. images 1 2 3 4

vectors page 3

candles

folded 2

folded

webcam self portrait

antenna 2

colors (click)

bars

By the way, if you haven't seen I've made some edits to my homepage.

Current project - part 2

2011-05-19T18:36:00.006-05:00

EDIT: Oh yeah, never posted part 1. Here's a hint:

More inventing

2011-05-01T13:11:00.000-05:00

USB-powered!

technology

2011-04-27T23:01:00.002-05:00

Two inventions I am currrently working on.

2011-04-26T21:03:00.000-05:00

Rotor 34 - HyperMolecules

2011-04-19T23:16:00.001-05:00

Click Here

If you haven't checked out the rotors yet, you should at least look at this one. Graphics by Tom Moody, programming by yours truly - I pitched the idea to Tom of collaborating on a rotor that generated forms similar to his collages. Tom worked on the spheres and pipes, and I wrote a simple javascript loop that would assemble and reassemble them like self-constructing molecules.

Mobius Printer Challenge

2011-04-11T21:16:00.000-05:00

CHALLENGE: Get this to work

Email me your attempts: hypo@hypothete.com
I will post the pictures sent in.
I've heard of two failed attempts by independent parties so far. (thanks frakbuddy and lolumad)
Starting to suspect that this is impossible for some reason.

Rotors - further development

2011-03-19T15:24:00.000-05:00

Rotors Landing Page

I've been posting links to lots of these rotors lately and just wanted to elaborate a bit. I started sketching ideas for these about two months ago and keep coming up with more. They're meant to be viewed within the context of a screen and ideally as a group, hence the landing page above. Where a GIF or video can provide motion and repetition, I'm looking for more complex loops and variable interactions with the rotors. Also they all look like hell in IE.

Reactive

2011-03-12T18:33:00.000-06:00

http://hypothete.com/sounds/loops/loops.html

http://www.hypothete.com/images/glasses/index.html

http://hypothete.com/businesscard.html

http://hypothete.com/images/other/newt.html

http://hypothete.com/images/rotors/rotor4.html

http://www.hypothete.com/images/rotors/rotor3.html

3 pages

2011-03-06T09:23:00.001-06:00

Rotor 2

Rotor 1

Clouds (for Luis)

A note for viewers - in most browsers you can push F11 to see a webpage in fullscreen. A lot of these HTML pages look best that way. A tip for speeding up the animation if you have an older computer is to resize the browser window to be small. I use browser size-based positioning and scaling in pretty much everything I make to accommodate the many aspect ratios and resolutions I'm sure you all are using. Of course, you can't anticipate every resolution (if you're running three 1080p monitors or reading this off of a Gameboy you're out of luck).

Goofing Around

2011-03-03T22:04:00.000-06:00

e-summer

antenna

Page Roundup 2

2011-03-01T23:07:00.000-06:00

http://hypothete.com/images/other/antenna.html

http://hypothete.com/images/other/blade.html

http://hypothete.com/images/forest/mufo.html

http://hypothete.com/images/magnets/index.html

http://hypothete.com/images/giant/fffforest.html

HTML Experiments Roundup

2011-02-19T10:01:00.001-06:00

INFINITE RGB HOLOGRAM (for mirrrroring)

Bands

Mars and Stars

Variations

Hologram Square

Graphics Interchange Format - Friday!

2011-02-17T22:56:00.000-06:00

This Friday, I have some work in a show at Denison University in Ohio! Graphics Interchange Format is curated by Paddy Johnson, and you can read about it over at Art Fag City. The show truly demonstrates the breadth of animated GIFs as an artistic medium, and as I understand it Paddy has been compiling work for the show for well over a year.

My pieces in the show are the remixes I made of work by the late Brion Gysin. If you haven't read about this guy yet, you should. Oh those crazy Beats.

I'm tired and not very clever tonight, so I'll leave you with that.

I wrote this on the bus today - Defining art and programming in terms of information density

2011-02-14T20:24:00.000-06:00

Preface

Through this short essay, I use the words "viewer" and "user" and also "viewer/user" interchangeably. These are not the words I want to use, because they have unintended implications. A "viewer" implies passivity, merely looking at an object. A "user" implies the use of an object, which further implies that an object is "useful." Art is not necessarily useful or to be passively consumed, and certainly interactive art requires active, experimental (as opposed to intentional) participation. The closest named behavior to the participation I am trying to describe is "play," but I'm not sure I feel comfortable describing art audiences as "players" just yet. I leave you with my awkward phrasing in the hope that further thought will be devoted to this difficulty in language.

Defining art and programming in terms of information density

The successful work of art implies a depth of content that supersedes the conscious intent of the artist. Knowledge of formal qualities of a medium assist an artist in implying depth. Programming is the art of feeding a computer a small amount of information that gives the computer the potential to produce a large amount of information. An artist working on a physical artwork, like a painting, experiences a near-equal balance of physical effort and physical result. A good programmer disguises their effort by reducing the size of their code - this is called "elegance." Programming techniques can generate high informational density.

Where art and programming meet, the artist is confronted with the nature of code as a formal quality. This means that the artist must use programming techniques and theory in order to create a work with implied depth. The artist must realize that their actions yield potential (a function) rather than direct result (a brushstroke).

Another formal quality of programming is control over the hardware/software running the code. This means that to some extent the artist or programmer has control over the agency of the viewer/user. The first medium that explicitly "controlled" viewers was video, which directs focus and therefore consciousness. Programming extends this control to offering the user the appearance of free will. The flip side of this is that the user can now contest the control of the artist. Often software requires user input within a set of parameters. The artist must take note of this - how far can this artwork be distorted? How much control should the viewer/user have over the final output? To some extent, the user contests the artist. However, the artist gave the user that ability in how they defined the interactivity of the work. Thus programming in an artwork allows for an artist to create a framework of thought in which viewers/users can test the boundaries of a concept.

When artists work from source material, the natural tendency is to abstract the work by means of reduction to select components. This can be done literally or figuratively. All interpretation leads to a reduction of information in the source; humans and machines prioritize details. However, adding interactivity to the equation allows for the viewer/user to bring their own experiences and preferences (new information) to the artwork.

From these factors, we can infer that interactive digital art is a balancing act of conceptual structure, code and its limitations, and the input of the viewer/user. Because of this complexity, many artworks mimic familiar interactive structures, such as websites, programs and video games. These forms give the artist a framework to develop, and viewers/users know how to approach the interface. Otherwise the viewer/user must be cued and taught how to interact with a work; too much freedom scares away potential audiences and prompts a chorus of "I don't get it" from the bleachers. The interactive artwork must entice and lead viewer/user behavior to some extent. The artist's role becomes one of anticipating and shaping potential experience.

Two options

2011-02-13T01:29:00.000-06:00

Boring

Fun

Circle

2011-02-07T00:04:00.000-06:00

new HTML experiment - Circle

4 Pages

2011-02-01T09:58:00.000-06:00

Keeping Busy

2011-01-30T23:31:00.001-06:00

Marker Grid - based on a drawing by ohahalicia

Believe it or not, this is a vector image. This weekend I've been keeping busy with projects like the above -a foray into vector filters. Still adding to page 2, so check out new work and image sources there.

New web drawings:

Lastly, a reminder: SELF PORTRAIT

Self Portrait - New collaborative project on Human Kibble

2011-01-28T10:58:00.001-06:00

Self Portrait

I'm looking for participants on a new project investigating online identity. I'm very excited about this one and will probably whip up an entry myself. The guidelines are pretty loose (I'm not even requiring submissions to be image files), as opposed to the Catalog in November, so I'm hoping to see some really creative entries.

Oh yeah, while we're talking Human Kibble stuff, I recently added a project listing to the front page.

"Positions"

2011-01-25T22:03:00.001-06:00

thanks to mirrroring for the title!

Blue Links

2011-01-24T09:26:00.001-06:00

Dumpers Mirroring, Noisia and I began building last week a repository of our high concept / jokey art historical work called "Too Much Concept." We're taking submissions, so if you get it and have work you'd like to submit, don't hesitate.

I twote about this site earlier - Webjam, an art collective that (from my vantage point) looks like it's been the net-art-world radar for a while. I've worked with Fabien and Carlo from the site before, and they produce very clever work. Go check them out.

More reductions

2011-01-23T17:41:00.001-06:00

More vector reductions on my vectors page. Still very ambivalent about this technique. I find the forms produced to be very seductive and energetic - like colored oil in a 60's light show - but it seems too easy, like I should be making things more difficult. I tried working together both unaltered and altered vectors as reduced-palette gifs today, and was reasonably pleased with the result.

More path tracing - click for full

2011-01-22T10:35:00.000-06:00

Site Update: Design Work

2011-01-18T15:30:00.000-06:00

http://hypothete.com/images/design/

I should have made this a long time ago... Highlights of my professional work for interested parties.

Accomplishments of the Now

2011-01-15T17:18:00.002-06:00

My laptop toasted itself late Wednesday night, so my routine is a bit thrown off. Thankfully, I was able to salvage the hard drive (it's now an external on my girlfriend's desktop PC), which held all of my vector source files and music. Whew! The upside to this situation is that I have an excuse to shop around for a new computer, and my routine is thrown off.

Recent work: Corpus, Artwork for Neighbors, TIWIDMCA, and the above, which I just finished. The image was made from a heavily manipulated raster image of random noise, run through a tracing filter in Inkscape. I then adjusted layer colors & added gradients until things seemed right. The tracing algorithm leaves very dynamic outlines, and I like being able to separate a flat image into layers by color or value. Will be investigating this further.

I can't stop thinking about science fiction these days. I've been perusing Orion's Arm, the best work of collaborative worldbuilding on the net. You can't find articles on transapients and art movements of the next 8000 years just anywhere. I dig the 90's-esque superclean 3D renderings for ironic purposes.

Also not helping this obsession was my visit to the Walker on Thursday to view an exhibition of work by Yves Klein. His work is postmodern, precambrian, and anticipatory of life in space. If you look at Klein's sketches, you can tell that he didn't care for science in the same way the Cubists embraced relativity. (air roofs, Klein? really?) Klein was more interested in the spaces and existences than the mechanics.

IKEA Plant

2011-01-10T10:55:00.000-06:00

Site update

2011-01-09T17:22:00.000-06:00

I've added a Recent Updates section to my main page and moved old content into archives. Hopefully this will make finding new content easier for visitors.

New pages:
Dump pg. 4
Vectors pg. 2

I also put new stuff up randomly on the HTML Experiments page, so check in there every once in a while. If you're following me on Twitter, you see all of that content as it goes up.

Let's Be Formal

2011-01-06T13:05:00.000-06:00

Warning of those who have a tendency to tl;dr - this is going to be long and technical. If you're brave enough to stick it out through this post, you'll understand the major formal qualities of filetypes in digital image making. I'm going to limit this discussion to popular filetypes exchanged on the web. From raster filetypes, we'll look at JPGs, GIFs, PNGs, and also BMPs to explain concepts behind the other types. I also will explain general qualities of vector images, as they are used online, but as of yet are not as widely supported as raster images. Lastly, all of this is heavily annotated with links to Wikipedia, because their sample images of concepts are very helpful.

Raster Images - the Bitmap
Raster images are essentially two-dimensional grids of color values, called pixels. The most basic qualities that all raster images have are a resolution, and a color depth. These basically just mean that each raster image has a fixed width and height, and a number of possible color values that can exist in the grid. When computers first started becoming popular, screen resolutions were low and computers could represent very few colors, if any. Nowadays, the standard number of colors that a computer can display is about 16.7 million. Each pixel displayed on your computer screen is a value made up of three bytes - one for red, one for green, and one for blue. Typically for colors on the web, values are expressed in hexadecimal, so for example a bright red is #ff0000.The code denotes that the red byte be set to its max value of 255, or #ff, and that green and blue are set at #00 each.

The most basic way to represent a true color image as a file is to simply lay these three-byte images out in a grid. The most common filetype that does this is the BMP (bitmap), well known to MSPaint aficionados. However, as true as the colors are, the files tend to be very large at high resolutions, making them unsuitable for web distribution. Thankfully (sort of), the human eye is only capable of distinguishing about 10 million colors on a good day. This means that we can cheat, and reduce our palette to reduce file size.

Image Cheats - Compression, Indexing and Dithering
This is where things start to get fun. The most common technique used in reducing file size is called compression, and I'll admit the exact methods of compression are beyond my scope of knowledge. However, I can describe the general principle and the effects of compression. JPEGs, possibly the most common filetype exchanged online, use lossy compression, which means that the original bitmap is broken into chunks by an image editing program and those chunks are converted from pixels into mathematical averages of the color content of each chunk. Here's an example:

This is Lena, a popular digital test image made some time in the 70s. I think someone scanned her from an old Playboy. Anyway, this file is a BMP; you might have noticed that it loaded from the bottom up (an odd quality of BMPs on web browsers). This image takes up 768KB, almost a megabyte.

If we compress the image extensively as a JPG, we get this:

This image only takes up 3KB! Obviously, this is very exaggerated compression; usually it's much slighter on most images. Notice that the chunks that the image has been reduced to are converted into large pixels or gradients. People working with JPGs call chunks when they're noticeable "artifacts," as they are reminders of the compression. Although someone interested in high-res photography might not want any artifacts in their image, some digital artists like the abstract qualities that compression can provide, and use it expressively. Sometimes digital artists will intentionally change random bits within JPG images to "bring out" glitches and therefore wild, colorful artifacts. A good example of such images would be Maxwell Paparellas' Intoxications series. PNGs also use compression to some extent, but the effects are not nearly as dramatic as the JPG. More on that later.

The infamous GIF is not a filetype capable of this sort of compression. This is largely due to its age - developed in 1987, when color on computers was still pretty hot stuff. GIFs use another method of reducing file size, called indexing. Indexing essentially changes how pixels work. Instead of referring to a color value, an indexed pixel refers to a color in what's called a color map or lookup table, like a palette. Here's Lena again:

Here we've reduced the image to 32 colors in the color map. I've drawn in the map on the right side, so that you can see all the colors that the image uses. This drastically shrinks file size (76KB, 1/10 of the original BMP) while maintaining good color. Indexing also gives the image a texture, as can be seen especially on Lena's shoulder. GIF makers often enjoy the added textures of various indexing methods, and look for interesting ways to employ them. To use a personal example, check out my GIF of Scott Ostler at dump IRL: 32 colors used for the total animation gives the light on his face a gritty, laser-like quality.

When I reduced the colors, I asked the program to simply average the whole palette down. However, we can again take advantage of the human eye and "cheat" if we so desire to make the image appear to have more colors. The way we do this is called dithering, arranging colors in patterns at the pixel level so that colors appear to blend. The textures from different dithering methods can bring interesting visual sensations to images. Here's Lena with the most common methods to illustrate:

Notice how much truer to the original the dithered versions are. Also notice the difference between the positioned quarter's checkerboard patterns and the Floyd-Steinberg quarter's texture. I like to think of the F-S method as "pore-like." Anyway, GIFs have an upper limit on the number of colors that they can display as well, 256 max. This puts their color depth at much lower than the average JPG, so the filetype is more suited for both images with very few colors and for images where a dithered texture is desired. Again, personal example - in Mirage I pitted F-S dithering of a black and white image against the antialiasing (slight blurring of edges) that most web browsers apply to images. This encourages hallucinatory moire patterns to occur in the shadows of the wavy buildings. In this way, you can anticipate how browsers treat images and design your base images to take advantage of that output. Browser rendering of images is a whole different subject which we'll save for the future.

Animation and Transparency
GIFs have two more formal qualities that make them interesting as filetypes, transparency and capability for animation. GIF animations can have as many frames as the artist might want, but more frames add to the file size quickly. We're going to use a sample other than Lena this time, the popular crab monster from dump:

Interesting things to note about this guy: the reduced color palette, very few frames of animation, and the transparent background surrounding the crab. The pixelation is an intentional move on the artists' part. GIFs have the capability for pixels to be either completely opaque or completely transparent. This allows artists to put an emphasis on the form of a shape or animation. This also makes things interesting for building animations, as GIFs treat each frame as a layer of the same image. When making animated GIFs, the artist must specify frame by frame the duration of each frame in milliseconds and the method of adding the frame to the image. The minimum duration for a frame to be visible is about 17ms, or 60hz, the standard refresh rate of monitors. Frames can be as slow as you want. A frame can either replace the previous frame, or combine, i.e. overlap onto the previous frame. The above image replaces each frame with the next frame. If we change the layers to combine, we get this:

The crab leaves "tracers" of the previous frames, then erases them when it returns to frame 1. This can lead to some interesting effects; check out Tom Moody's "GIF Heavy Hitters" figure, which brings an emphasis onto the path of motion in space. In addition to these possibilities for GIF animation is the GIF's loop qualities. GIFs can loop infinitely, or loop only once per display. Finite GIFs have been largely unexplored due to poor browser support and general lack of apparent possibility, but they can exist.

Returning to transparency as a topic, the advantages that the PNG filetype have over other graphics formats is their capability for gradual transparency. Unlike the on-off method of transparency used in GIFs, PNGs can add another byte onto each pixel value for an alpha value. PNGs also support up to 16.7 million colors outside of transparency.This makes PNGs very useful in web deisgn, where gradual transparency can be used for all sorts of interesting effects.

I mentioned that I was going to return to a comparison of PNGs and JPGs regarding compression. I honestly have a poor understanding of PNG compression, but I know from personal experience that when PNG images use few colors, their file size is usually much smaller than a comparable JPG, and artifacts do not occur. When PNGs are used for photographs, often they are much larger in file size than their JPEG counterparts. Basically, JPEGs more suited for photos, and PNGs are better for layering, abstract images and illustrations.

I think it's time for another Lena sample. Here she is as a PNG with varying alpha values. 532KB - not great size-wise, but pretty good for having an extra byte added on to each pixel. Notice how she blends into the gray background. If you were to remove the alpha channel on this image, the missing areas would reappear.

Wow, kinda misty and romantic. I should point out, you can dither alpha values and save an image like this as a GIF. You get what's called the "screen door effect." Depending on your computer and browser, this image might be antialiased and gain a moire pattern around the outside. You might want that for your images, but if you just want simple, gradual transparency, stick with PNGs.

Vectors and Reproducibility
We're almost finished! Vector images are a completely different ballgame. Remember how I mentioned that compressed JPGs are made up of lots of small "chunked" mathematical functions? Vectors take that a step further. Think of a curve, like a sine curve. In math, we can use points, curves and calculus to define the areas of regions of space. Vector image editors like Illustrator and Inkscape allow users to draw simple shapes, which are stored as mathematical functions. This makes these sorts of files incredibly small, and also scalable.
Rather than having to define a value at every point in a grid, the computer is given a mathematical function to trace and fill in.

Lena, you've changed somehow... As you can see, this drawing is composed of curves, simple shapes, fills and gradients. Simple vectors can be very reminiscent of airbrush drawings due to the ease of using gradients and sharp edges. Because of the clean appearance and the scalability aspect, vector images are very useful for graphic designers who make illustrations and logos for publications. Most print work needs to be at very high resolutions, and so pixels just don't cut it when you need a banner graphic 8 feet wide. Also, I should mention that above I posted a raster version of the original vector graphic. Some of you might be able to view the original in browser. Try scaling the image up and down in browser, if you can; you'll notice the edges stay sharp instead of becoming pixelated, like the scaled up crab monster above. For those of you unfamiliar with how to do that or unable to see the SVG file, here's a larger raster version. The two most commonly browser-supported vector formats are SVG, an open-source format, and SWF, the Flash standard. SWFs allow for interactivity and animations, but require proprietary software to write and view.

This brings us to our conclusion, the subject of reproducibility. As I said, vector images are notable for their scalability. Keep in mind, though, that since the raster versions of a vector file are limited to their native resolution, they are not as easily reused. When a raster image is uploaded to the internet, anyone can edit it, take credit for it, and reuse it at the resolution it exists at or smaller. An artist can have ownership over a vector image by distributing it online as rasters and keeping the vector file private. That way, if authorship is ever called into question, the artist can produce the highest resolution possible, the vector, as proof of ownership. This is an issue I haven't seen discussed in the art community before, so I'd love to hear any artists weigh in on this possibility of content management. Unlike raster files, where there is no original source, so to speak, vectors are like paintings in that they are original objects, but also are like digital images in that they can be infinitely reproduced. It's an interesting paradox.

Many digital artists know that by putting their work online, they expose it to a remix culture where the work will be infinitely reproduced, lose authorship and take on new meanings in different contexts. This is a formal quality of sorts for all online content, and I believe it's one of the main reasons why collectors and institutions are hesitant of purely digital art. Finally it should be kept in mind that all of the image filetypes I've discussed (except for the BMP) share what might be called a formal quality at this point: common support on all web browsers. Because these images are viewable by most people online, they are suited for online display. There are ways to translate these files into formats viewable outside of a computer, but their suitability for the online environment is part of what makes them unique and important as art media.

If anyone thinks that I've missed formal qualities of these filetypes, please share your thoughts in the comments. This essay is meant to be constructive and open to growth.

Visions of Google

2011-01-05T11:31:00.000-06:00

While falling asleep last night, I had what would be best described as a hypnagogic vision of a landscape image, comprised entirely of Google Docs shape elements. I took this as a sign, and wrote down the idea. This morning, I made two attempts at simple compositions
:

"Bad Day for a Cylinder"

"Two Frames"

Really liking the simplicity of form and palette. My notes from last night say "Art of the Private Internet," whatever that means. For prior examples of Google Documents as a collaborative art platform, check out Chris Collins' "Public Interface Gesture" performance.

What's the Deal with GIFs?

2011-01-04T16:28:00.000-06:00

I don't have to tell most of you that animated GIFs received a lot of press within the past several months. Most of the GIFs cited in said articles are gags, "glitter" GIFs, clips from TV and movies, and your typical Funniest Home Videos-type fare. The growing popularity of image-centric sites like 4chan and more recently Tumblr have encouraged a resurgence of public interest in a 24-year old file format because of the GIF's unique ability to endlessly loop animations. GIFs are very small files as compared to a modern digital camera photo, and all major browsers support the animation to a functional extent. However, it should be made clear that the GIF is not inherently kitsch, just like a roll of film is not inherently kitsch. It's a filetype, a medium, and therefore has several uses. The main two uses of GIFs right now online are in informal conversation, and as art/components of art. Let's discuss the division.

From a conversational standpoint, GIFs carry a lot of punch as images because the animation grabs your attention, and a short loop is suited for a "reaction image." Take the Seinfeld GIF above. The message is clear: if someone posts this in a discussion, they're saying "Eh, this is hooey and I'm not gonna bother. See ya." It's expressive, funny and fast, and it sets a tone; all necessary qualities for extended net discussions.

Ryu Punch, by noisia

On the other hand, a very small fraction of GIFs are intentionally produced as "art." Here is an example by noisia. Rather than using pop culture elements literally, the artist has used an animation from a fighting video game as a formal element. The fighter's identity is not the emphasis, the work is about motion, repetition, bold color and symmetry. The image is kaleidescopic and infinitely tileable. This is a radically different use of the medium, and requires a different sort of looking to interpret and appreciate.

Early Myspace photo?

Some have debated the legitimacy of GIF art in light of the popular culture associated with the format. Most recently, Twitter-based performance artist Man Bartlett took up a beef with the popularity of the format on his Tumblr. For those still wary of the GIF, let me offer you this: in the early 19th century, the camera was invented. For decades, artists explored the possibilities of the new medium of the photograph, but their efforts were not treated as "sincere" or "legitimate" by the establishment. This was for two reasons. The first was that the new medium had great appeal to amateurs and businesses who would otherwise have to employ illustrators for producing images of their work, and so most photographs were not intentionally made as fine art. The second reason was that photographs were generally evaluated by the art world under the definitions of art as defined by painting, the main form of visual art at the time. Paintings have been for the most part produced only as art objects throughout their existence, and so it was very difficult for some to grasp the idea of a medium being neutral. Eventually, by about the 1920s it was decided that the intention of an object's creator, not the medium, determined whether a work was art or not, and an artwork was to be evaluated by subject matter and formal qualities.

smile-camera-flash by ahem. Art or not?

GIFs are like photographs, in that the method of image production is unique, but the division between amateur and artistic intention is what differentiates both usage and evaluation methods. Context is key; the website that a GIF is posted on and even its positioning in that website alerts the savvy viewer as to whether the image is to be evaluated as art or not. Just like photographs, there are even those GIFs and sites where the lines blur, and it's hard to tell what is art. A viewer of digital art must learn how to look at a work by understanding context and formal qualities. I'll be writing a breakdown of formal qualities of popular filetypes in the next few days to aid those who want to explore the concept further. What's important in the big picture is that participators in the art world understand that digital filetypes are just types of media. A GIF is like undeveloped film; it's what you photograph that counts.

Happy New Years!

2011-01-01T08:51:00.000-06:00

Had a nice, low-key New Years' Eve last night celebrating at home (I've been sick this week). Live-blogged the event last night with several other artists and friends at Haze Luux (NSFW), a group blog coordinated by dumper grapeshasta.

Can't sleep, 'cuz my div's on fire

2010-12-30T09:15:00.000-06:00

Still trying to understand jquery. Here's a new page to play with: INSOMNIA

Another Big GIF

2010-12-26T01:26:00.002-06:00

Holographic

Merry Christmas - Two Sites

2010-12-25T00:41:00.001-06:00

mirage

viewpoints

Pick Comb

2010-12-19T10:07:00.000-06:00

From a really weird dream I had last night.

Sphere 2 and Dogs

2010-12-18T17:52:00.001-06:00

edit: also this:

Don't question it

2010-12-18T16:54:00.002-06:00

Hypnodisk

2010-12-16T15:34:00.000-06:00

Inspired by a post on Boing Boing.

New html

2010-12-14T11:03:00.001-06:00

Browser Surrealism

edit: a simple but cool remix by frakbuddy.

2 new pages

2010-12-13T15:03:00.000-06:00

2010 Misc Images, page 5

RUMINATIONS

For those who are confused by the second link, let me help this much: the I Don't Get It guy is the man on the left side of the page. He doesn't get it.

Martian Sculpture

2010-12-13T12:25:00.002-06:00

Zuckerberg Nose

2010-12-12T15:22:00.003-06:00

http://www.hypothete.com/images/other/badartjoke.html

Edit: tweaked the nose a bit, for the curious.

Cubezzzzzz

2010-12-10T08:49:00.000-06:00

I have a short GIF up at the tumblr cubezzzzzz, a new project run by internet friend maryrachel. You may have seen some of her work in the Human Kibble Catalog; we missed meeting each other by about five minutes at IRL back in October. Definitely go through all of the cubes, she's making and collecting some solid work.

One more, why not: LRI

2010-12-09T23:47:00.000-06:00

Footage from Ryder and Scott's Photobooth back at IRL, backwards and looping. Been meaning to put this up for a while.

Ace of Pentacles

2010-12-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

So last night, I played a bit of a game with members of dump.fm. I named people speaking in the chatroom, drew from a Tarot card deck, and webcammed myself holding the card. I then stated the name of the card, and the popular interpretation. This provoked responses from confusion to excitement and even fear in some of the members.

I'm not a believer in magic, but I do hold strongly to the idea that when presented with an ambiguous symbol, people tend to give it meaning. I picked up the deck several years ago for an art project; it's not uncommon for "creative types" to go after redesigning a standardized set of 72 illustrations (and lose interest). The challenge is to illustrate without letting your biases show, keeping possible interpretations open for each card.

I'm also a decent cold reader when it comes to Tarot. It can be fun to see how far you can probe without letting your target know, kind of like the board game Operation. A talented cold reader has a strong memory and a quick wit, and can salvage any failed attempt at meaning. Blogging and making images both remind me of cold reading to some extent. There's a lot of probing and failed attempts before people start talking about the content, and it's the work that hits home that people remember.

Léger Study

2010-12-09T22:09:00.000-06:00

So I'm reading through this essay right now on absurdism, and the author leaves this footnote on art:

It is curious to note that the most intellectual kind of painting, the one that tries to reduce reality to its essential elements, is ultimately but a visual delight. All it has kept of the world is its color. (This is apparent particularly in Léger.)

I'm probably doing the man a great disservice here, but I think there's something to be said for form as well.

wasthisjeanette

2010-12-08T15:58:00.001-06:00

Video loop made from 147 mobile uploads on Jeanette's Facebook page.

Collective Consciousness

2010-12-08T15:11:00.000-06:00

Ryder Ripps - INTERNET THERAPY

Erik Stinson - Towards a New Theory of Creativity

What the hell, zeitgeist. WTH.

Srs bsns

2010-12-05T18:43:00.003-06:00

If you have related strong opinions, post 'em in the comments.

Bond Reboot

2010-12-05T12:13:00.000-06:00

A picture I made for a project by dump friend AGT528.

Morning Sketch

2010-12-04T11:38:00.000-06:00

3 Links

2010-12-02T08:39:00.000-06:00

Brains Tile

Landscape

FIERCE

THE CATALOG IS FINISHED

2010-12-01T11:45:00.002-06:00

Check it out here!!!!!

Post-Postmodern Relations

2010-11-30T18:42:00.000-06:00

Webpage for Bob
A translation. This isn't a slur, it's an extended hand.

2 Sketches - Mask and Nebula

2010-11-30T08:53:00.000-06:00

Chicago Art Photo Dump

2010-11-28T20:31:00.001-06:00

Visited some friends for Thanksgiving in Chicago. We spent 3 hours at the Art Institute of Chicago, and also visited Millenium Park to look at Anish Kapoor's big bean. Here are some samples, I apologize that I didn't get all the names.

Detail of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georget Seurat. I was this.

The Key, an early Jackson Pollock

Ray Yoshida

Philip Guston

Piet Mondrian

Francis Picabia (hot damn! This was at least eight feet long in each direction and glowing.)

Fernand Leger

Yves Tanguy

There was this hilariously skinny Barnett Newman in one room that I just kept looking up and down and giggling. It's way more surrealist than his normal stuff, and I had to animate how I looked at it for you.

This is a composite photo of a Gerhard Richter painting. It was impossible to get the right colors to show up in one shot, so I layered a few different exposures to get it right. I suspect he wouldn't mind the slight blur.

Lastly, Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor. You wouldn't believe the crowds this piece was drawing. Everyone was all over it, even though it felt like 15 degrees outside. This is another composite to show from looking straight up into the "bean" to a horizon view.

Black Friday deals

2010-11-26T12:49:00.001-06:00

Hyperallergic is now selling the T-shirts I designed for their contest! Go here to purchase your own.

Iconic

2010-11-23T10:13:00.000-06:00

New vectors are going up on my main site here.

Time

2010-11-21T22:22:00.001-06:00

The tape is now the music - ASM

2010-11-21T10:47:00.000-06:00

This could be viewed as conceptual art, but I first put it together because it makes me laugh. ASM is a site that combines a feed of images from dump.fm with random entries from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies deck. The result is the images are given the context of the text (or vice versa) and your brain tries to give meaning to the mashup.

Many thanks to Josh Harrison, who is hosting the deck and tweaked his site specifically for this project. Thanks also to the dump.fm admins, who explained to me how iframes work. As for why ASM is affiliated with the Human Kibble domain, I'm still working that one out.

State of the Union

2010-11-20T10:22:00.002-06:00

Brad Troemel has started a fierce debate regarding the state of internet art at the blog bien-pensant. You can read my comment and some amazing responses by community members and participators from the recent show BYOB organized by Rafael Rozendaal.

On a Tangent

2010-11-16T12:08:00.001-06:00

It appears I've caught the vector bug from my last post. After Malevich was made in the GIMP, but it's a lot easier to manipulate planes and gradients on a computer if they're vector-based rather than raster-based. I use the open-source software Inkscape to produce vector images - it's kind of buggy at times, but it's a whole lot easier and safer than pirating Illustrator.

Here's a sneak peek of a project that I started this morning. It's referential to art history a bit, but not so much that most people won't get it. Sometimes it's better to steal.

After Malevich

2010-11-14T12:26:00.001-06:00

Click for full. This is a study of Kazimir Malevich's Morning in the Village After a Snowstorm that I've been working on for the past three weeks. I saw the painting when I visited the Guggenheim last month; immediately I wanted to explore using gradients in the same way that Malevich did, to boldly push and pull space. What better way to make gradients than on a computer?

Assorted Disorientations

2010-11-09T21:12:00.001-06:00

Made this at IRL, and was really pleased with the effect. I tried this with webcam photos today (thanks to all contributors!):

Also futzed around with 3fram.es today - here are the results:

and lastly... Migrating Sunglasses

Cathedral 3

2010-11-09T11:25:00.000-06:00

More tampering with the laws of nature in CSS. Cathedral 3

3 new pages

2010-11-04T12:28:00.000-05:00

Giant

Time Capsule

Desktop

Dump IRL - Selected pics from setup/show

2010-10-24T10:31:00.005-05:00

From left to right: Curator Lindsay Howard, dump.fm founders Stefan Moore and Ryder Ripps, and artist Lucy Chinen

Animated tile by Chris Shier (the work can be viewed here)

"Ray" by Lucy Chinen

Left to right: dump.fm members Melipone and Frankhats

Working on my piece "In Rainbows"

dump.fm founder Scott Ostler

Gallery visitor standing in front of "dump.fm Group Portrait" by Tom Moody

UPDATE: More pictures of the show here, taken by exhibiting artist/writer Erik Stinson. I also uploaded more photos to dump; you can see them in my log. Hit the previous button to page through.

East Coast Bound

2010-10-19T10:42:00.001-05:00

As many of you already know, I will be traveling to NYC tomorrow for the dump.fm/IRL exhibition and residency. The exhibition is at 319 Scholes in Brooklyn and is curated by Lindsay Howard. The show opens on Friday and concludes next Saturday with a humongous party that will be hyperlinked to Mexico City. How 21st Century is that? Lindsay and Ryder Ripps (dump's creator) have lots planned for the week that will be up that alley, so expect reports of goodness and weirdness. I will be in the city from tomorrow until Nov. 1, working on projects etc. and most likely updating here with pictures and amusing anecdotes. If you're one of my net buddies and you live in the area, shoot me an email and maybe we can get lunch or something.

In unrelated news, one of my designs is a finalist in Hyperallergic's T-shirt contest! If you haven't read Hyperallergic before, you come for the snark and stay for the relevancy. I'd appreciate any votes (one per day) that my Internet neighbors would be willing to share.

Lastly, I'm still looking for participants in the Human Kibble Winter 2010 Catalog...If you've thought about contributing and hesitated, go ahead and email me. This is not meant to be a big project to stress yourself out about, it's just a fun thing to do, and the cutoff date doesn't really mean much. Human Kibble defines itself based on your input, so give it a shot!

Information Conglomerations and Online Community

2010-10-18T10:18:00.006-05:00

The most wonderful thing about the Internet is that it allows for enormous bodies of correlated information to be nearly seamlessly tied together through hyperlinks and localized cultures. The Internet is the latest, greatest, and most all-encompassing examples of large, organically-formed texts that has existed to date, but it is certainly not the first extensively hyperlinked crowd-sourced project. People love making and exploring large, dense conglomerations of related information. This essay discusses how information sources develop localized culture, methods that sustain culture after the fact, and the powerful effects of the world's biggest and best conglomeration.

1.
If 20th century media has taught us anything, it's that above all, people enjoy consuming continuous information. After Marconi patented the radio in 1896, it was only 10 years later that the first commercial broadcasts began to occur. Radio paved the way for television, which was commercially available by the 1920s, but matured into a highly profitable medium by the 1950s. Today, most people have favorite television programs, even if they don't own a TV, but instead watch what is transposed online. The broadcast method, where one source of information is constantly distributed to a public audience, has proven to be highly successful, as long as there is wide enough appeal in content or wide enough variation in available content.

If we only consider the basic definition of a broadcast - one source point of information distributing a feed of information to a wide audience - broadcasts are critical to human power structures. A speech, a sermon, or a performance can be considered broadcasting. Walter Benjamin, an early 20th Marxist art theorist, said this about watching movies: "The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested." Benjamin is talking about the directional aspect of cinema, the control that video exerts over its viewer because of its temporal aspect. All broadcast media possesses amounts of this trait for the same reason - the viewer must spend time listening or watching, and therefore their consciousness is directed. This leads to the development of new ideas and new associations in a person.

As successful as the broadcast model might be, it leaves the viewer with a head full of ideas and experiences with no outlet. The solution for this build-up has been the accumulation of culture around broadcasted media. This is an old practice - people generally enjoy hearing things and watching things, and then reenacting and discussing with their peers. Some examples of this might include the formation of music genres and political groups, or the evangelizing method of most major religions. However popular these ideas and groups might be after the initial period of broadcasting, cultures require constant input to remain cohesive. Once a TV show ends its run on the air, most fans of the show gradually disperse and find new shows to follow. In order for a broadcast to maintain followers, one or more methods must be used to keep the culture alive.

One of the least popular words commonly used online in academic circles right now is "curation," referring to the act of an individual sifting through information and choosing favorite bits that seem to be related for distribution as a body to the public. This term is looked down upon primarily for its overuse, which seems to be indicative of two things. First, the act of conscious curation implies superiority in the individuality of the curator - "I am especially qualified to make these choices about the dissemination of this information." This can be seen as intimidating, and is most likely why pastors and politicians attempt to become impersonal by relaying messages from another power, be it abstract or mythical, in their speech. Second, curation is a widespread practice online, which implies the fragmentation of culture (because of the necessity for so many niche sites) and exacerbates it further. The idea that culture is a monolithic or dualistic entity is still very popular, and so offering a Balkanized model is seen as pluralist. All things aside, curation seems to be the main form of online entertainment right now - the sharing of music, videos, articles, and all other media is endless, and very different content is disseminated by each different person. Everyone is curating the content they receive into broadcasts. This constant churning of the sea of information keeps broadcasted information fresh for a very long time.

However, general personal curation is not enough to maintain an idea. Eventually, most people hear a popular joke or song if the initial broadcast reached and excited enough followers in the first place. Old television shows have their enduring fans and nostalgic enthusiasts - nostalgia being a very powerful, but intermittently cyclical method of culture preservation. I would go as far to speculate that nostalgia is a hard-wired survival tool, but an investigation would be outside of the scope of this essay. What becomes fascinating about information once the initial broadcast is over are the timescales at which its surrounding culture reasserts itself within the other cultures of its followers and as a whole. Different sources of information - different broadcasters - reassert themselves within surrounding (overlapping) cultures at different timescales, and these timescales are dependent on choices made by both the broadcaster and the ensuing culture in the preservation of the initial broadcast.

One popular, reasonably functional method of maintaining a culture is marketing the idea of gnosis, "hidden knowledge." The Gnostics of the first few centuries C.E. literally carry this concept in their modern name because of their belief of secret methods of communing with their god. I mean to stretch the term as far as "limited edition" objects in relation to a franchise, "director's cuts" of movies, and DVD releases with cast commentaries. George Lucas, producer of the Star Wars series of films, has time and again used gnosis in stretching the commercial viability of the Star Wars universe. Various online communities, especially the chans, have a popular joke about "VIP Access" to secret areas of their websites. The appeal is obvious: within a preferred cultural experience, if the possibility exists of a "deeper, more fulfilling," more information-rich experience, most people would jump at the offer. Of course, the downside to this approach is that if too much gnosis is revealed too quickly, the excitement of the exclusivity is lost. God, or Lucas, is most successful when lurking in the wings, contributing on rare occasions.

Another method for cultural survival is the spin-off, which many TV viewers are familiar with. In our definition, we don't need to even note distinctions such as the difference between "I Love Lucy" and "The Lucy and Ethel Show," as long as we recognize that both are part of the same "Lucy" culture. In a spin-off, a content producer that formed a culture looks for particularly successful and popular pieces of information within their broadcast, and broadcasts again, expanding upon that chunk of data. Though this can sustain cultural phenomena, it also decreases the half-life of the original culture's relevancy. Consider the seven spin-offs of the 70's TV show "Happy Days" - itself a spin-off of a late-60's TV show - this is where we get the idiom "jumping the shark." Spin-offs are deliberate on the part of the original content creator and a risky move - they are inherently unstable because the viewpoint making the decisions is the broadcaster, not the receiver. The common mistake here is the assumption that because a broadcast forms a culture, the broadcaster is doing something right. The problem with this is that the broadcaster is not a receiver, and is therefore not experiencing the work in the same way. Andy Warhol talks about aura in his book, "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol": "I think that 'aura' is something that only somebody else can see, and they only see as much of it as they want to. It's all in the other person's eyes. You can only see an aura on people you don't know very well or don't know at all." The broadcaster cannot see the aura of the broadcast, the aura is only in the minds of the fans, formed by a complex series of relationships with the work that caused them to become fans in the first place, and the shared similarity of complex relationships with the work between fans is what makes culture. With agency comes knowledge, and knowledge destroys the aura. The broadcaster/aura relationship therefore limits a broadcaster's attempts to sustain a culture.

So far, this discussion has been predicated on the idea that the broadcaster maintains full responsibility for the continuation of the developed culture. This is an unnecessary assumption. Because of the danger of destroying the aura of a culture, the broadcaster must actually seek public absolution of responsibility. Instead, what has historically served to maintain a broadcast's wider relevancy in the long term has been the formation of a group-assembled conglomerate text centered around the premises of the original broadcast. Some moderately successful examples of this would include the Bible, the many commentaries on Hinduism, the Lord of the Rings fantasy milieu, Wikipedia, and just about anything that has a "theory" school of thought. If anything, these examples should demonstrate the popularity of conglomerate texts and the power that they hold over their resultant cultures.

2.
Unlike previous centuries, the 21st brings even stronger methods to preserve data than ever before. Everything is recorded, shared, and networked to some degree. This changes immensely how humanity decides what to actively record; the test of time has changed. Now, if a broadcast is strong and popular enough to cause a small fan culture to develop, the test of preservation as a distinct unit and not as scattered information comes in the form of fan-based archival and annotation, rather than simple linkage and physical preservation. Two things happen if this occurs: First the allure of the culture changes focus from "new information" to "catalogued information." Second, in the organization of information by the culture, the "hooks" of aura - the qualities that formed the culture in the first place - become exposed in the hierarchy of information. Naturally, if there's content in a broadcast that people relate to, they're going to talk about it more. This has the added effect of bringing in more fans that can relate to the hooks, if the message is clear (and if the message is allowed to leave the culture). More fans means more eyes on the broadcast; as Linus Torvalds said about his decision to freely share the development of Linux, "Many eyes make all bugs shallow." More eyes on a broadcast means that a broader audience will be searching for hooks and categorizing the information, further widening the external and internal appeal of the preserved broadcast. In this way, a culture around a broadcast can become self-sustaining.

Today, our strongest tool for bringing people together to examine broadcasts is the Internet, the ultimate conglomeration of information. Supremely disorganized with regard to content, billions of dollars are spent every year in developing better ways to index and cross-reference the information available online. Every day, people develop more innovative ways to link content together online, so to some extent the Internet is as self-reorganizing as it is messy. No body of information as large, dynamic, and varied in content has ever been created in human history. Almost fractal-like in its nature, the Internet is composed of individual web pages of specific information organized into websites concerning general topics that link to each other by topical similarity. Search engines then index these sites by relevancy, directing the user to an individual web page that functions as a facet of a website. The physical structure is uninteresting for the purposes of this discussion; the hyperlink is the key to understanding cultural phenomena today.

Hyperlink usage has evolved significantly from the early web. Before search engines were anywhere near as powerful as they are today, hosting sites like Yahoo and Geocities would organize content into categories for their users' perusal. This led to the practice of forming webrings, essentially curated groups of websites on similar subjects specific enough to be outside the scope of the listings. These websites would have links either to the next site in the ring, or to a hub with a listing of all of the participating sites. The practice eventually died off as online content production changed user bases; this probably had something to do with the rise of more powerful search engines as well. As the sites would have been indexed as linked, they would show up in search results together; eventually the search results trumped the webring. Nowadays, if a website or blog has a "links" section, the links aren't necessarily reciprocal or even topical; they have more to do with personal context. Though irrelevant today, these early aggregations of related information served to jump-start Internet culture by sharing members, providing enough review and polishing of some early websites to allow for experimentation and growth. Much like Darwinian evolution, users provided the pressures necessary to encourage websites to speciate in their structures, and as mass appeal widened this process became exponential. This led to the switchover that many refer to as "Web 2.0," from a mostly static web nursed by external forums to a social web developed in personal interactions.

Links nowadays in more dynamic settings, such as a tweet or a blog post, function either to provide context, set a mood, provide access to a service, present information at a point in time, or even subvert expectations. The hyperlink is becoming as much of a part of language as the clause. Social linking restructures the Internet, and builds it in our organic likeness. Active consumption of information online makes the text adapt to the reader; new chunks of the conglomerate collect in our news feeds every morning, ready to be consumed, contextualized, "liked," and re-dispersed. We are constantly creating broadcasts of broadcasts of broadcasts, all fully annotated, and our Facebook friends listen, judge, and sort. Personal interests are the new sitcoms. It is easier than ever to form a conglomeration of work around a broadcast, and therefore easier than ever to spawn a new, localized culture.

3.
What repercussions exist due to the new conglomerations? Because cultures are now more separate and varied, it becomes a necessary skill for the 21st-century browser to be able to know how to interpret the vocabularies and organizing structures behind each new culture they encounter. The modern reader needs to know how to find the information they seek, rather than simply memorizing information. This is the difference between the 20th-century "nerd," who memorizes statistics and formulas, and the 21st-century "geek," who maintains "geek cred" by keeping up on the discussions relevant to their interests. The latter strategy of constantly hunting for and receiving new information allows for spontaneous discovery of associated information, which encourages broader knowledge rather than deeper knowledge. The broader thinker may not have the reliability of the deeper thinker, but it is more likely that the broader thinker will find more associations between seemingly unrelated content. This has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand the informed viewer with an eye for information can enter and mingle with many cultures easily; this allows them to spread the ideas they encounter via the translation of their experience into the vocabulary of other cultures. This is where memes come from: ideas, mostly self-encapsulated, that translate easily from one culture to another. On the other hand, if the hooks are strong enough and the geek searches hard enough, he or she is more susceptible to entrenchment - investment - in a culture.

Like-minded individuals can more easily form cultures online than anywhere else; this leads to the "amplification" of ideas within these cultures as their vocabularies develop. Although this usually leads to harmless in-jokes and sometimes net-wide memes, amplification can be dangerous. A good example of this would be the formation in the mid-2000s of "Pro-Ana" (pro-anorexic) communities on Livejournal, an early social-media/blogging platform. In these blogrings, anorexic individuals encouraged each other to continue the dangerous practices that people with the eating disorder tend to undertake. Before the Internet, few, if any, Pro-Ana organizations existed, much less shared ideas for "thinspiration" and traded tips for suppressing hunger pangs. More controversial communities such as the Pro-Anas thrive on anonymity due to possible real-life repercussions. Few anorexics will admit to their peers that they have an eating disorder, although identifying it as a lifestyle choice might change their attitude. Current web trends indicate a push towards less anonymity on social networking platforms, however this does not stop anonymous communication (such as on the chans) from occurring. It's not impossible to be anonymous on the Internet of 2010, but it diminishes the size of one's social safety net, and one's audience. It's also important to keep in mind in light of such an example that the Internet amplifies all communities that invest in it - human rights groups, sexual fetishists, whatever. As a society, we aren't becoming better or worse, just moreso. Save for the spread of literacy, nothing in history can compare to the transformation that cultural amplification will effect - does effect - on the world.

I'd like to conclude by reiterating the successful behaviors that lead to a living culture in modern society. A broadcast needs fans to survive, and in order for a fan culture to develop, fans need a place to communicate and exchange information regarding the broadcast. Culture is best sustained by allowing for contextualization and analysis of the broadcast; this happens when people can both categorize information about a culture locally and easily distribute the ideas of the culture to other cultures.

When cultural information is easily accessible from outside the fan culture, more people are likely to discover the culture and cross-reference their own cultures with its elements. Crossover interests encourage the creation of memes, mostly self-encapsulated ideas that move easily from culture to culture. Memes are powerful tools because they extend the lifetime of a culture by reinforcing social ties between fans and non-fans. The sustained culture usually will draw more members over time, leading to an "amplification" of ideals within the group; this can have few to many repercussions, depending on the content.

Memebers of a culture need to remember that it is their choice and their efforts that keep a culture alive. A good leader acknowledges this fact and puts into place systems that encourage the aggregation and organization of cultural content, so that their ideas will spread. As part of the larger conglomerate, the Internet, it becomes almost a virtue for users to connect content in ways that facilitate others to do the same. Those in power should be aware of the spread of knowledge made possible by humanity's evolving methods of spreading information. A light hand and equal access to both explore and add to the conglomerate encourages democratic behavior and unanticipated innovation.

Meta-GIF

2010-10-16T09:47:00.002-05:00

An idea I was kicking around last night. Will explore more.

EDIT: Part 2:

Still looking for participants! Winter 2010 Human Kibble Catalog

2010-10-15T11:05:00.000-05:00

This is the Catalog so far. The red areas are pages that have been claimed by GIF-makers in the project. As you can see, we're already pretty far into the project, but we still need participants to claim up the rest of the pages. If you would like to contribute a little of your time to making this project a success, head on over to the site, choose two available pages, and shoot me an email! There's no rush to finish because I'm hoping everything will be complete by November 1, but the sooner you claim your pages the better your choice of pages will be.

If you're a seasoned Giffer (pronounced "Giffer" or "Jiffer?") looking to show off a bit, you should jump right in because this is your opportunity to shine. All of the completed work I've seen so far is going to knock your socks off, and it feels great to be part of a solid body of work.

Open Call for Time's 2006 Person of the Year

2010-10-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for participants in a new project: assembling a GIF catalog. Head on over to http://humankibble.com/ to check things out. Read the rules, ask any questions here. I think this could be a lot of fun.

dumpkins

2010-10-04T09:42:00.000-05:00

dumpkins - photoshopped pumpkins made on October 1 by dump.

3 new pages

2010-10-03T15:14:00.001-05:00

My trip in August to Alpha World, the net's first successful Metaverse.

Experiments in being boring.

Stupid CSS/HTML tricks. Older computers (like mine) should not visit this page.

Fav

2010-10-02T17:04:00.002-05:00

SPACES: Sound Collage Album II

2010-09-29T14:32:00.000-05:00

SPACES - Album II by Hypothete

40ish minutes of sound collage madness

Available for download and your listening pleasure at http://soundcloud.com/hypothete

Page Traversals

2010-09-23T16:23:00.001-05:00

I've added some new experimental websites at this address. Might try learning javascript and jQuery in the near future; in the meantime I'm having loads of fun with outdated tags like marquee. Did you know that you can make marquees go up or down?!?!?!

Other stuff - writing a post on the power of "conglomerate texts" right now. Sounds overly academic, so I'm trying to keep my explanations approachable (and figure out a better term). I'm also almost done with sound collage album #2, which I will be uploading to my Soundcloud since Megauploads don't last forever... Bonus content will be available on a separate page on my site. It's a lot more sound than I originally planned for, running maybe an hour long.

I've been doing battle with processing because I need to know it, but I can't seem to get OpenCV to work with it. I'm really interested in the environment for webcam/eye tracking stuff - very jealous of some of the things I've seen Jeremy Bailey and Michael Manning accomplishing. I want my AR. :(

Lastly, the zoetrope and other project are steadily approaching completion, although I could be spending more time on them...We shall see.

The Social Media Psalm

2010-09-19T13:49:00.001-05:00

Tom and I wrote this on dump today:

tommoody: my blog is my tumblr, i shall not want...
hypothete: it maketh me repost that fancy hipster shot of a girl at a party
tommoody: he leadeth me to the path of foolishness
hypothete: it destroyeth my employability because interviewers always google me first
hypothete: it convinces me to employ search engine optimization for my namesake
hypothete: yea, though I lurk through the chans and crackpot time-cube pages for lulz, I will fear no evil
hypothete: for I am not dumb enough to bait anonymous
tommoody: for hackers will protect me (not)
hypothete: my anonymity and lack of fame comforts me
tommoody: for my proximity to the name of a famous cricket player protects me
hypothete: thou preparest a "block" function to unfriend my enemies
tommoody: thy rod and thy blockage shall comfort me
hypothete: thou anointeth my blog with pageviews and retweets, my bandwidth runneth over
hypothete: surely I will be followed on twitter all the days of my life
hypothete: and I will dwell in the house of Google forever
tommoody: yeah though i walk through the valley of search engines

Variations on a Spider

2010-09-19T12:41:00.001-05:00

Escher Lizard

2010-09-13T10:24:00.001-05:00

Made from sketches by M.C. Escher, a famous woodblock carver and mathematician.