Field - a development environment for making digital art

- Created by "The OpenEnded Group" -

Description taken from the site:
[link]

Field is a software project initiated by OpenEnded Group, for the creation of their digital artworks. It is an environment for writing code to rapidly and experimentally assemble and explore algorithmic systems. It is visual, it is hybrid, it is code-based. We think that it has something to offer a diverse range of programmers and artists.

Further description:
[link]

Field is a development environment for experimental code and digital art in the broadest of possible senses. While there are a great many development environments and digital art tools out there today, this one has been constructed with two key principles in mind:

Embrace and extend — rather than make a personal, private and pristine code utopia, Field tries to bridge to as many libraries, programming languages, and ways of doing things as possible. The world doesn't necessarily need another programming language or serial port library, nor do we have to pick and choose between data-flow systems, graphical user interfaces or purely textual programming — we can have it all in the right environment and we can both leverage the work of others and take control of our own tools and methods.

Live code makes anything possible — Field tries to replace as many "features" with editable code as it can. Its programming language of choice is Python — a world class, highly respected and incredibly flexible language. As such, Field is intensely customizable, with the glue between interface objects and data modifiable inside Field itself. Field takes seriously the idea that its user — you — are a programmer / artist doing serious work and that you should be able to reconfigure your tools to suit your domain and style as closely as possible.

I'm going to look into the software... see if it would be useful for my project[s].

Art of Limina: Ambiguity in Space

This artist [Gary Hill] has created works which demonstrate spatial ambiguity.
Defining dimension and depth is difficult.

Links:

Slought.com exhibition listing, including audio file link:

Art of Limina: Gary Hill

An essay on Gary Hill's work:

Up Against Time - pdf

Movement Notation

As I shall be choreographing motion, I feel it necessary to research what forms of notation for movement already exist.

Here are some links:

MovementWriting

Movement Notation - with free lesson upon sign-up.

Labanotation
- Laban Software

Action Stroke Dance Notation - brilliant codes for notating dance. Extensive descriptions and tutorials.


Benesh:

Benesh Open Source

Benesh main site
- Benesh Notation tutorial


And here's a brilliant thesis by Dr. Royce Neagle that appears to have extensive research in applying notation to animation or digital format:

Emotion by Motion: Expression Simulation in Virtual Ballet - pdf

Algorithmic Choreography with William Forsythe & Paul Kaiser

An interview with digital artist Paul Kaiser talks with choreographer William Forsythe about the potential of computers and algorithms for the future of dance choreography.

Here's some excerpts:

William: So I began to imagine lines in space that could be bent, or tossed, or otherwise distorted. By moving from a point to a line to a plane to a volume, I was able to visualize a geometric space composed of points that were vastly interconnected. As these points were all contained within the dancer's body, there was really no transition necessary, only a series of "foldings" and "unfoldings" that produced an infinite number of movements and positions. From these, we started making catalogues of what the body could do. And for every new piece that we choreographed, we would develop a new series of procedures.

Some choreographers create dance from emotional impulses, while others, like Balanchine, work from a strictly musical standpoint. My own dances reflect the body's experiences in space, which I try to connect through algorithms. So there's this fascinating overlap with computer programming.

For Eidos, I gave my dancers and myself the following general instruction: "Take an equation, solve it; take the result and fold it back into the equation and then solve it again. Keep doing this a million times".

Paul: That’s where your focus on spatial procedures and the architecture of movement maps so well onto computer algorithms and virtual spaces. As you said before, it’s as if we’re all on the same quest.

William: How do you define that quest?

Paul: Shelley and I have spoken about it as the search for a new art form, which seems about to emerge from this odd confluence of the dance, visual art, and computer worlds. I imagine that in this new form, performance and recording and notation ‘ three strands of the performing arts that have always been separate ‘ will be fused. So that you can have the notation shaping the performance, the performance shaping the recording, the recording shaping the notation, and so on. Perhaps this new process, which builds on itself, can bootstrap a new way of making art.

William: Where I’d start is with the score. What’s been missing so far is an intelligent kind of notation, one that would let us generate dances from a vast number of varied inputs. Not traditional notation, but a new kind mediated by the computer.

I found the interview through this blog.

Rhythmic Subdivision

I'm looking at ways in which I can incorporate subdivisions of rhythm

• Pitch and Relational Anatomy


• Subdivisions in Anatomy and Music Notation


• Form-making Subdivisions


• Emotion in Architecture

Metaphors on Death - Conscious Weather

Observations on the weather and it's relation to my Grandmother's passing.

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Saturday - Gloomy -

The Death of the Conscious Mind

Sunday - Pristine -

Visitations

Monday - Cold and Breezy -

The Death of the Unconscious Mind

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Left Leaving <--- a poem I wrote in 2006.
It was a reflection on the past. The first piece I had written in 9 years.

Death - A Reframe On Transition

Healing through Connections - strength in numbers

Death and the Ego - the ego's response to death. Experiencing loss.

Community Response - communal love and support