I think you've hit upon the greatest challenge in this show, something that's difficult for any kind of interactive art. How does anything that's just a signal - be it some text, a light level, a sound, a button push, a capacitance reading, a time of day or any other event - translate into "art" at the single-piece level, and translate into "emergent communication" at the network level? <br>
<br>It's very easy to make a button light up an LED, and not much more difficult to make a button on one piece light up an LED on another piece. It's more difficult to instill some higher-level meaning into those signals - that's a challenge for each individual artist regardless of what other pieces they're hooked up to. If none of the pieces are interesting on their own then the collective whole probably won't be terribly interesting either. But if that goal is met - and I think we have some very creative people involved with this show - I'm hoping that the act of networking everything will produce signals with a variety, intensity, duration, etc that perhaps the artists didn't anticipate, and that the propagation of those signals throughout the system will produce some interesting spatial/time effects.<br>
<br>So anyway, no buzz kill - I think you're just bringing up the point that this stuff isn't easy. Who knows? Maybe this will need to be an annual thing so we can continue to build on it.<br><br>Eric<br><br><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 2:51 PM, James Buchanan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jamesbuchanan1220@comcast.net">jamesbuchanan1220@comcast.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Hi Gang,</span></font></span></p>
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><span> </span>Sounds like a great idea, but my only
question (and I don't want to sound like some guy being a buzz kill) how would
this be illustrated as an art form that displays the concept of emergent
communications?</span></font></span></p>
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></font></span></p>
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Would be
happy to help.</span></font></span></p>
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></font></span></p><font color="#888888">
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">- James</span></font></span></p></font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">
<p><span><font size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"> </span></font></span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2" color="black" face="Tahoma"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: black;">-----Original
Message-----<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b>
<a href="mailto:dorkbotsea-blabber-bounces@dorkbot.org" target="_blank">dorkbotsea-blabber-bounces@dorkbot.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:dorkbotsea-blabber-bounces@dorkbot.org" target="_blank">dorkbotsea-blabber-bounces@dorkbot.org</a>]<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">On Behalf Of </span></b>Joseph Gray<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, February 21, 2009
11:39 AM<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> A discussion list for
dorkbot-sea<br>
<b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [dorkbotsea-blabber]
text tribe for PDSTWE4</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">nice idea,
I'd be into having an xml stream for control data for connecting art pieces
together. </span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">Processing
and Arduino seem like an ideal environment for this, for both sending and
receiving data</span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;"> </span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;"> </span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">On Feb 21,
2009, at 10:43 AM, Eric McNeill wrote:</span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;"><br>
<br>
</span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-right: 0.5in; margin-left: 1in;"><font size="3" color="black" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black;">A few of us talked about doing a
text-based tribe, using XML over an IP network to share any kind of text. I'm
thinking pieces could do a sort of call and response, riffing off of each
other's output. It'd also be a good one for interaction over the internet
- web crawling, Twitter, remote web-based interfaces, etc.<br>
<br>
I posted some ideas on the wiki:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://projects.dorkbot.org/dorkbot-wiki/TextTribe" target="_blank">http://projects.dorkbot.org/dorkbot-wiki/TextTribe</a><br>
<br>
Let me know if you'd like to be a part of this.<br>
<br>
Eric<br>
eric [dot] mcneill [at] gmail<br>
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