one of the wild things about living in Mexico is that Radioshack is alive and well and there’s one around the corner from my apartment. this makes projects like this Arduinoflake all the more tempting when I know I can pop over and buy a few LEDs on the spot.
resource roundup!
I love how this article on game development is a 1-2 punch of different types of limitations. there are always technical limitations, such as needing to work with legacy code in a particular language, or needing to meet a certain size limit, but there are real life limitations that shape our creative practices as well. author Jaime González García digs into his technical approach but also his strategic approach to working opportunistically around his family’s needs.
cool project alert! #GANPaint is an object-level drawing tool that uses a deep network to create scenes. it’s a bit uncanny valley and reminds me of playing games like Myst back in the day. you can learn more about how #GANpaint uses GAN dissection here.
personal code-crush Amy Wibowo gave an awesome interview to School for Poetic Computation recently. if you missed her workshop during the New York Tech Zine Fair, here’s your chance to learn about her creative process. she also digs into her struggles against peers who told her that coding can’t be femme….
“Every time I’m criticized for my work being too feminine, I just want to make it more feminine.”
on that note, Amy Wibowo is also the creator of Fairyfloss, a pastel/candy/daydream theme for Sublime, Atom, and Xcode. if you’re not coding in Fairyfloss, ur missing out.
I haven’t played with it yet, but this small script for animating CSS grids looks like a nice alternative to Isotope when you don’t really need something that complex.
reflection as part of the creative process is highly underrated, especially in tech (how can you move fast and break things if you are stopping to think about what you did????). but it has enormous value! it’s important to find the reflection rituals that work for you, whether that’s time with a therapist, a daily conversation with a colleague, journaling, or an IM chat with a friend, but this article argues that even 5 minutes of reflection per day can make a huge difference. why not rev up to ur new years resolutions with some time to think about how you’ve been working on a daily basis?
opportunities:
School for Poetic Competition has rolling open admissions for their winter session! “SFPC’s Code Societies, our winter intensive session, will examine the ideological and corporeal attributes of computation; concentrating on the poetics and politics of culturally embedded software….No coding experience necessary; only enthusiasm and willingness to reconsider how code shapes and is shaped by society.” this sounds rad as hell and SFPC seems like a really amazing community to tap into. apply asap!
Afrotech Fest, a tech festival by and for Black people of African and Caribbean heritage, has an open call for submissions for their 2019 event in London. even if you have never given a talk before, they encourage submitting your idea for consideration and offer some great resources for how to prepare. deadline is January 13, apply here.
? upcoming events!
Monday December 10! Eyebeam! NYC USA: Eyebeam presents curator Barbara London and and video and performance art pioneer Joan Jonas in conversation. “As two central figures in the field of media art, London and Jonas’ professional relationship spans over forty years of collaboration. In this special one-on-one conversation, the two will chart the evolution of emerging technologies and their impact on artmaking through three of Jonas’ breakthrough artworks from 1972 through the present.” RSVP for free on Eventbrite.
also Monday December 10! Sunnyvale! NYC USA: the December Algorave is upon us with an evening of digital art and music from livecode.nyc. head over to Sunnyvale at 1031 Grand St. in Brooklyn to check it out! set times are up on Facebook, cover is $10, doors at 7.
Sunday December 17 – Monday December 17! Tisch School of the Arts! NYC USA:ITP & IMA have their winter show just around the corner. no need to RSVP, just drop by between 2-6pm on Sunday or 4-8pm on Monday at 721 Broadway, 4th Floor South. the ITP winter show is one of my favorite annual events, there’s always something that grabs my attention and feels genuinely inspiring amid the student projects. check it out!
just for lulz:
this twitter thread has a good illustration of why solutions are about more than just the numbers.
*~housekeeping~*
as always, submit to the open artist call if you have anything in the works that you are excited about! and if you have an event or opportunity to promote (anywhere), please send me all the details. the next newsletter will cover the week of December 17 to 23, but I’m happy to promote events farther in the future as well and keep them on the calendar.
