The Null Device

2003/8/25

The LJ Times, a generative art hack which populates a newspaper-style page with random LiveJournal entries and Associated Press photographs. Quite amusing.

(Hmmm... the LiveJournal XML feeds offer a veritable cornucopia, or perhaps an Augean stable, of postings, most of them all but meaningless to people who don't know the poster, and thus functionally indistinguishable from computer-generated text or cut-up art. (The blogosphere at large can be said to have similar properties, though not all of it is in one convenient location.) I'm surprised more artists haven't harnessed these founts of commentary to power generative-art installations.)

automatism dadaism digital art found art livejournal xml 1

More excellent news: BBC to open up archive; all content from the BBC's archive will be released online under a Creative Commons non-commercial license; no digital restrictions management technologies are expected to be involved. This could prove to be a glancing glow for the neo-Galambosians who are pushing for end-to-end copy-control on everything. Though I half expect the politicians to scupper or cripple it (after all, everyone wants Murdoch's support in the next election, don't they). Though if it goes through, it will be a terrific boon for the cultural heritage of the 20th century. (via Rocknerd)

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Excellent news. SuperCollider, the rather Smalltalk-like audio synthesis programming language for the Macintosh, is now Free Software; it is being rewritten for MacOS X and Linux and released under the GPL. I played around with the MacOS 9 version of it a while back and it was a fun thing to play with. Not as visual as Pd/MAX, but more comfortable for those used to programming, and syntactically a very nice language.

digital art music programming languages supercollider tech 0

Keith Urquhart's remixes of the last Ninetynine album are online in convenient MP3 format. Check them out. (The Kinetic Factory one is my favourite; and the Cleaner one is also pretty interesting.) (via Rocknerd)

Update: There now appear to be MP3s on the Ninetynine website; also worth checking out. You haven't lived until you've heard Wöekenender.

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