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Drawing, Animation, Coding Systems (DACS)

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Casey Reas edited this page Mar 19, 2018 · 78 revisions

This isn't a comprehensive list; there's no attempt for it to be a full review. It's a working document to prepare for a one-hour presentation about the intertwined histories of drawing, animation, and coding - therefore Drawing/Animation/Coding Systems (DACS). This is a relatively narrow view of a narrow topic.

The Medium:

  • David Hockney and the Quantel Paintbox. "Painting with Light." "There's no distance between you and the image being made."
  • Samia Halaby and the Amiga. "Use a material for what it's capable of doing", her idea extracted from the Bauhaus. "I came to the computer because of what its nature is, what it can do. The nature of programming, the possibility of motion and sound and time."
  • Harold Cohen and LISP. "I write programs, programs make drawings. Drawings made completely by the computer. This isn't the case of computer aided art-making." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPczQgCuOOc

Pre-Code (Analog Machines):

Machines that produce cinematic images, often through performance.

  • Magic Lanterns. ~1659.
  • Phenakistiscope. ~1832. ... Zoetrope. ~1865. (These early platforms have a strong relationship to GIFs in their tight loops of frames.)
  • Thomas Wilfred. Lumia. 1919+. https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/lumia ("My own experiments began in May in 1905 in Copenhagen with a cigar box, a small incandescent lamp and some pieces of colored glass.")
  • πŸ¦πŸ„ Mary Hallock-Greenewalt. Sarabet. 1919+. http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/g/0867Musical.html
  • John Whitney. (Did the machine have a name?). ~1950+. (Customized M5 antiaircraft mechanism. Whitney was a clear bridge between analog and digital machines/systems. It's something he thought about and articulated in interviews.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eMSPtm6u5Y

Pre-Code (Direct Animation):

Working directly on the material through scratching, drawing, painting, collage, or exposing the film to light

  • Man Ray. Emak-Bakia. 1926. (Sections in the "Rayograph" technique)
  • Len Lye. A Colour Box. 1935.
  • Harry Smith. Early Abstractions. 1941-1957. (Compilation of films preserved by Anthology Film Archives)
  • Norman McLaren. Hen Hop. 1942.
  • πŸ¦πŸ„ Len Lye. Free Radicals. 1958.
  • πŸ¦πŸ„ Stan Brakhage. Mothlight. 1963.
  • Stan Brakhage. The Dante Quartet. 1987.

Code Drawing/Animation Systems:

Text-based programming languages and platforms with a specific focus on creating animation and drawing systems. These are general systems that are used to create more specific animation and drawing software. (Some systems like ART-1 aren't included because they didn't focus on animation?)

  • Ken Knowlton. BEFLIX. 1963+
  • Tom DeFanti. GRASS, ZGrass. 1974+
  • 🐦 Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, Cynthia Solomon. Logo. 1967+
  • John Warnock et al. PostScript. 1982+
  • Dan Winkler. HyperTalk. 1987. (Scripting language for Bill Atkinson's HyperCard.)
  • Bob Sabiston et al. BaD Windows (Bob & Dave's Windowing System). YEAR. (Created at the Visual Language Workshop at the MIT Media Lab.)
  • John H. Thompson et al. Lingo. 1989+. (Originally developed for MacroMind Director 2.2 and was extended through future releases.)
  • OpenGL. TK. TK
  • Gary Grossman et al. ActionScript. 1998. (First designed to control animation in Macromedia Flash.)
  • John Maeda. Design By Numbers. 1999+
  • 🐦 Fry, REAS et al. Processing. 2001+ (PostScript + OpenGL + Design By Numbers, inspired by Logo and BASIC.)
  • Just van Rossum, Erik van Blokland. DrawBot. 2003. (First Python system?)
  • Zach Lieberman, Theo Watson, Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks. 2005.
  • JΓΌrg Lehni. Scriptographer. 2001-2012. (Plugin for Adobe Illustrator)
  • JΓΌrg Lehni. Paper.js. 2011.
  • Lauren McCarthy et al. p5.js. 2014. (JavaScript interpretation of Processing)

Software Drawing Systems:

Environments to draw with software ranging from digital versions of analog tools to new ways of drawing only possible through software.

Software Animation Systems:

New methods of creating animation that are unique to working with software.

Software Performance Systems:

Software to create and generate live animation by capturing and playing back gestures. There's a strong relationship to Direct Animation techniques.

To Add

  • Andreas Gysin. Chronodraw.
  • John Maeda - TimePaint
  • John Maeda - TK
  • John Maeda - TK
  • Amit Pitaru, Zach Lieberman, Zach Gage. Rhonda Forever.
  • Amit Pitaru. Sonic Wire Sculptor.
  • James Paterson, Irene Alvarado, Amit Pitaru. Norman.
  • Karian Foehr. Time Bandit Tool - https://vimeo.com/10282320
  • 🐦 Pierre HΓ©bert and Bob Ostertag. Between Science and Garbage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-boyZ9n4Ww (Is there a more general software system for this? It utilized an early version of what became Jitter?)
  • Paul Haeberli. DynaDraw. 1989. http://www.graficaobscura.com/dyna/index.html

Connective Line

  • Thomas Wilfred > Oskar Fischinger > Motion Phone > Inchworm > Sketch Machine. Performance and a realtime output. The Lumia existed in real time and space and Sketch Machine doesn't have the material qualities, but it's highly connected. File size and quick messages vs. a choreographed performance pieces.
  • The least interactive and most programmable vs. the most interactive and least programmable. Can programmable be replaced with "customizable", or are they inherently different things.

Questions

  • What do you want from your work and how do you create software to support that?
  • What is your idea of being an artist and how does software come into play?
  • The mindset of the composer vs. the mindset of the player/performer/conductor.

Intent

  • To create a tool for yourself to use to make things.
  • To create a tool/instrument to perform.
  • To create a tool for others to create things (less common for artists).

Some artists make tools and others don't. If an artist does make a tool, how does that tool relate to the practice.

What is the audience for the tools for others? A general audience of non-artists and non-coders vs. a tool for artist-coders (Processing)

Presentation

What if we preface each work with a slide that has a short instruction a la Sol LeWitt? For example:

"Cut and paste small bits of semi-transparent organic matter to blank film stock." - Mothlight

"Capture pieces of your visual environment and arrange them on a plane." - Shrub (also Mothlight?)

"Compose and define relationships between 2 dimensional lines at any scale." - Sketchpad

"Create improvised moving images." - Motion Phone / Clavilux / AVES

"Codify mark-making to be machine executable." - Processing Drawing API / Turtle Graphics / AARON

J.A.S.

  • Welcome Casey & thank everyone involved.
  • Summary of the exhibition Make Pictures and the artworks on display.

REAS

  • Path (Software 1). 2001/2014 πŸ¦πŸ’¬ "Please show the English instructions as well?"
  • Network B. 2009
  • Still Life (RGB A). 2016
  • Processing...

J.A.S.

  • thePRBAT. 2009-2011
  • Shrub. 2014
  • No Paint. 2016
  • Dot. 2017

REAS & J.A.S.

Contemporary analog systems / outlying examples and practices:

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