Generator multimedia project
2. PROJECT:
2.1. Introduction:
Generative Graphic Design first caught my attention in early 2001, at that time I had invited Johnny DeKam to come to Portugal to help me organize and teach two of the four multimedia workshops I was responsible for in the Cinema and New Media department of Porto2001. The starting point for the two workshops was ‘Interactive Live Video Manipulation’. That lead us right to the first workshop topic: ‘Video Sampling’ (a familiar topic to me). For the second workshop, Johnny DeKam suggested ‘Generative Graphic Design’ and that was it. As I prepared myself for the workshops, I became very interested in Generative Graphic Design and Generative Art in general. I used every resource available to learn what I could about it. During the workshops, I developed several prototypes of Generative Graphic Design applications, some eventually ended up influencing me to develop GENERATOR.
Enter GENERATOR:
GENERATOR is an interactive generative design art project.
It is heavily influenced by design, not only in its formal presentation, but also in its development process and thinking.
Its starting point is assumedly graphic design. As you can verify from the numerous manifestations all over the world, graphic design entered a new era, one of greater experimentation that often takes place outside the commercial realm and is constantly forcing us to reconsider its place and role in Art today. [1]
Traditionally, designers used computers as tools with applications analogue to conventional media, but that is changing rapidly. That transformation is occurring mostly due to the proliferation of high-level programming languages that place in the hands of designers the tools needed to create their own applications. These new applications are generally characterized by the fact that they produce content generatively, generating unpredictable results based on what designers have previously specified.
Designers are discovering the computer’s potential to unleash ‘new worlds’ of extreme beauty, and are exploring them in different contexts and environments.
2.2. Objectives:
GENERATOR is an attempt to develop an interactive generative system for real-time creation and performance of animated and abstract imagery and synthetic sound.
Normally, interactive systems are deceptive because they wholly and implicitly engulf both static and dynamic media. In this way they masquerade as older forms: if an interactive system moves, it is easy to think it is an animation; if it holds still for a movement, we mistake it for an image. We must not be so easily deceived! Interactive experiences are really quite another thing. They are more than spatial, more than temporal, and more yet, even, than spatiotemporal configurations. The defining property of interactive systems in their use of feedback – in which a system’s output affects its subsequent input – and their incorporation of people as essential components in this feedback cycle.
Many generative systems rely upon creating autonomous systems, which can, to a limited degree, be aware of their surroundings, and therefore respond to their environment. The basic notion is that it applies logic it has learnt of the outside world to whatever input is given, causing new reactions which can be captured as creative output. (2) In this respect, GENERATOR makes no attempt to be autonomous. It truly is a mechanic reproduction of creative decision-making, and so avoids the issue of ‘artificial intelligence’. If a non-artificial intelligence system can still be seen to be creative (because the code is merely an extension of the artist’s own logic) then there is no need to deploy artificial intelligence, as the artist already possesses intelligence (or not as the cause may be).
GENERATOR development represents an experimental attempt to design an interface, which is as once flexible and easy to learn, but which can yield interesting, infinitely variable and personally expressive performances.
2.3. Concept:
GENERATOR as a whole, works as an encapsulated system, this system is composed of several layers, which are organized hierarchy and through which information flows.
This encapsulated system works as an user interface, where every visual, audio and tactile component gives the user updated and constant feedback, thus creating an environment by which in turn the user can express itself through visual and audio content generated in real-time, completing the feedback of the interaction loop.
GENERATOR derives its inputs from human gesture. The psychological and physiological intimacy of the relationship we have with our gestures is surprising, and when our marks are used to generate uniquely ephemeral dynamic media, it’s possible to create simple and transparent interactions, which can nevertheless open new vistas of possibility and experience.
GENERATOR becomes an electronic art/sound instrument that liberates the action of art/sound control from the art/sound production mechanisms, his form isn’t limited by the corresponding constraints and is free to move in many other directions. (3)
Probably this will be the form of the electronic art/music controllers of tomorrow… becoming much more adaptive and intelligent… (3)
2.4. GENERATOR Presentation:
Visually, GENERATOR has a particular layered structure: ‘code’ and GUI (graphical user interface) are blended and displayed as unique single layer. That layer is superimposed on top of the content layer, both forming a collage where ‘code’, GUI and content are presented as one, forming a very interesting visual landscape.
This layer structure brings an interesting element the visual presentation of this project and that is that one thing that is normally hidden in other art projects, ‘code’, in GENERATOR is visible to the public.
GENERATOR has a multi-channel audio environment, providing real-time spatial processing and integration and sound events localization with room acoustical quality to allow real-time 3-D audio manipulation and distribution.
This enables GENERATOR to create an even more involving environment.
2.5. GENERATOR format:
GENERATOR can be presented as a performance or as an installation, giving GENERATOR autonomy to become an interface with which users can express themselves in different locations. People visiting the installation can interact with it much the same way a performer would in a live performance.
More Info:
(1) “Restart: New Systems in Graphic Design” by Christian Küsters + Emily King, 2001
(2) “How I Drew One of My Pictures: or, The Authorship of Generative Art” by Adrian Ward, 1999
(3) “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” by NIME (http://www.nime.org), 2001
