did you miss me??? I am doing my best this year to “work” as little as possible, but I still had a client rush, etc., etc., etc. it’s nice to actually be writing code and designing things again, instead of, say, presenting a thoroughly researched and planned product roadmap that will never actually see the light of day, but still. I have also been annoyed? bored? sad? angry? about a lot of like what is happening in terms of the ~internet world of art~ the past few weeks, but I don’t really want to talk about that until I’m ready to write my 3000 word essay that is actually just about Star Trek’s replicator technology, so we’ll loop back to that.
in the midst of my mini-hiatus/crunch I did indulge a bit in an actual virtual art event that was quite cute! as part of “World on a Wire,” Rhizome hosted a talk/workshop with ZZYW (Yang Wang & Zhenzhen Qi) that played with their work, ThingThingThing, in a clever group setting.
the work is something of an exquisite corpse, and the workshop portion of the event was centered around using the ThingThingThing software to create our own things that could be used to populate a little petri dish of a world. it’s a virtual, collaborative garden, if you had the power to make your personal plant tear through the garden with a contagious wave of destruction. you don’t HAVE to do that, but you can, and in our session someone did, which made our own little petri dish’s life cycle pretty dramatic.
I recommend reading ZZYW’s own take on the work and its influences, but you don’t have to get too technical to see something timely and poetic in a single aggressive thing having the power to scale its behavior exponentially until the whole system crashes.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
resources!
hoo boy who couldn’t use a bit more joy in their life these days? Jane Friedhoff has shared a series of essays on “Games, Play, and Joy” that grew out of her Games + Joy course at NYU ITP. this looks like some excellent food for thought if you are working in games or interactive experiences or are just, like, a human being trying to survive.
shader superstar Freya Holmér has a new 3-part lecture series on shader coding for game devs. what an international women’s day blessing to us all. check it out:
here is an EXTREMELY bookmarkable doc with a big pile of creative code algorithms and techniques that has been graciously compiled and organized by Raphaël de Courville and Taru Muhonen of Creative Code Berlin. this is like 10 newsletters’ worth of stuff! Raphaël has also been going to town on Twitch lately with some very chill p5.js streams. how do they get it all done!
what is an API?! this explainer by Faye Sipiano is a plain language introduction that is great for beginners and great for old farts who are maybe struggling to explain what an API is to every person who DMs them on Instagram with their app idea. *cough*
sharing variables between javascript and css is a nice way to do some tricky things! I recently used the custom properties method in this article to do a neat little transformation on scroll with only a few lines of code.
who doesn’t want to make a jellyfish friend with whomst to vibe??
Hey! This week I've been making Jellyfish, animated using vertex displacement in the shader. Inspired by the amazing work by @ZappForThat! 🤩 #unity3D #madewithunity #shaders #shadergraph pic.twitter.com/NQH2wb5X3O
— Cyan (@Cyanilux) June 7, 2019
educational opportunities!
CUNA has a number of Spanish-language courses that are still open this month, and they are offering packets of courses if you can’t resist picking just one. if you snag the “Viaje a Neptuno” packet you can sign up for Post Web: De la Utopía a la Distopía, Realidad Aumentada, and Live Performance & Cinema all at once! they’re also offering a 20% discount on courses for femmes with the code CUNAWOMANPWR until tomorrow! check it out!
Gray Area’s Creative Code Immersive for spring 2021 is open for applications! this is 12-week course on creative code and interactive art that covers a foundation of core techniques while creating an environment for collaboration and exploration. yours truly did it back in the fall, and it was a great way to reframe my relationship with technology after some rough experiences in commercial software. the session begins on April 6 and applications are due by March 31. learn more and apply here.
open calls!
first and foremost, tons of galleries are running a spring open call for work this month. a lot of them just fall under the umbrella of “contemporary art,” and might not be the most obvious fit for whatever weird stuff you’ve been making lately, but I’d recommend taking some time to scoot thru Instagram and see who’s accepting submissions.
Phoenix, an independent cinema and art center in Leicester, UK, are inviting proposals to create an art game that responds to ecological themes and the Anthropocene. you’ll get a £4000 fee to produce the work as well as development support and an exhibition. time to live out your wildest SimEarth fantasies! learn more here and apply by March 28.
CultureHub has an open call for yearlong residencies tethered in either NYC or LA that will include a $2500 stipend, access to a studio, equipment, and technical support, and assistance with documentation and promotion, among other nice benefits. they’re looking for artists who critically examine technology from a diverse array of mediums and creative perspectives. learn more and apply by April 18 here.
VRHAM!: Interactive Arts has an open call for creators and artists who want to develop their already existing artistic project (or a work in progress). learn more and apply by March 15 here.
the 4th VH AWARD has an open call for Asian artists engaged with the context of Asia and its futures who make screen-based works. you can find more about the award here and check the guidelines here. applications due by March 19!
upcoming events!
every Monday this month! 7PM UTC-5! you are literally missing out right this moment on friend-of-the-newsletter Jas Brooks and Ashlyn Sparrow live streaming a scratch-n-sniff playthrough of Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail on the Weston Game Lab Twitch channel. this is NSFW but extremely worth your time. learn more here and register ASAP to get your scratch-n-sniff card in the mail.
Thurs, March 11! 1:00PM UTC-1! as javier said in the Discord, this one is an instant RSVP! Allison Parrish and Everest Pipkin talking about cultivating intimacy and creativity in data-centric spaces? yes please! RSVP here.
Sat, March 13! 3:30PM UTC-5! so the past few days here in CDMX have been a bit wild thanks to much-needed actions w/r/t the problem of femicide. the next time you are planning a radical action like projecting on the side of the nearest national palace, it’ll be worth understanding how to use safe and reliable communication. check out this workshop from Tech Learning Collective to get some hands-on guidance re: cybersecurity. learn more and get tix here.
Sat, March 20! 2:00PM UTC-5! CyPurr Collective will be talking password best practices with Heart of Code in this free virtual event! no seriously you probably need to get yourself some better passwords. learn more and RSVP here.
April 2-4! Uncommon Hacks is a hackathon for university and high school students to come together and build innovative, zany, and entirely uncommon technical projects. neat! this year’s edition will take place from April 2-4, and will include workshops on game building, design, and animation as well as mainstays such as intro to programming, front- and back-end web dev, and technical career skills. learn more and register here.
April 29-30! the 2021 Computer Mouse Conference will feature lectures, video performances, panel discussions, writing, a live zine, and an actual mouse tear-down workshop. this sounds like a proper deep dive into an interface that has become a default for human-computer interaction. learn more and get tix here.
just for lulz!
idk why this Star Trek babies meme was saved to my desktop but now u all get to enjoy it!
* ~ housekeeping ~ *
if you have anything in the works that you are excited about (an event, a workshop, a new project), please send me all the details. if you wanna share links or chat, there is now a Discord server that you can use here.
p.s. the best way to celebrate international women’s day, besides actively dismantling oppressive systems, is to GIVE WOMEN MONEY. especially trans women! also nonbinary people too! you can just find them and give them money!
