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Artistic Software: Processes and Products

• Letizia Jaccheri, Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Structure

• Motivation • Background: Software• Goals: art and software• Experience: art and software• Future and challenge

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Background

• Software engineering (1988 - )– Master “Software development environment” 1988– PhD “Software process modeling” 1995– The informatics era is over

• Cuore & Computer Mondadori• Kjærlighet og Computer

• Multidisciplinary (2001 - )– Health, military, biology, bank, schools, ...– Art!

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Computer science/engineering

• Programming: Constant, variable, if, then, else, while, for, compilation unit, library, C, C++, Java, Python, procedure, algorithm, task, thread (ex. processing)

• operating system, database• Software engineering: Object oriented programming and design,

testing, software process, software architecture, empirical software engineering, requirements, design, software architecture, quality, open source software

• AI: artificial intelligence• Hardware: CPU, RAM, ROM, BIOS, buses, power supply, ...

(ex. arduino)

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Software: Creativity and constraints

• Software development – Creativity: code and fix / free software– Constraints: WaterFall model

• Research– Creativity: good ideas– Constraints: Research method, middle term

evaluation, state of the art, literature review

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Software: do and observe/write

• Software development– Do: programming– Observe: document

• Research– Do: Software design– Observe: Empirical software engineering– ... Action Research

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Software: models and products

• Software– The models are the products (compilation)

• Hw– Physical construction of components

• Architecture– ...

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Goals

• Explore the way the interaction between software technology and art can also be beneficial for the software technologists

• I was told that “software is intangible”... Through art we want to sense software by hearing, touching, and seeing. We want to engage in software dialogs.

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Experience (art - software)

• RIK (Rom IKT Kropp project film 2002)• Experts in team

– 2004 (IT - art) 2005 (technology - art) 2006 (software art)

• Blog letiziajaccheri.splinder.com letiziajaccheri.motime.com

• Cooperation with– TEKS (board) Trondheim electronic art center– Oyvind Brandsegg – Falanx / ARM / Mario Blazevic– Åsmund Gamlesæter (lysvegg)

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Experience• Course software art: products and processes• Project and master students

– 2005-2006 • Thor Arne S. and Audun

– 2006-2007• 1 Nicolas M.• 2 Rune F.• 3 Thibault and Maximo

• PhD and PostDoc– 2006 PhD Salahuddin Ammed (from 25.09)– 2007 PostDoc Anna Trifonova (from late 2006)

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Literature (a start)

• (1) Aestetic Computing, edited by Paul Fishwick , Leonardo Books, 2006. ISBN: 0-262-06250-X. Chapter 1, An Introduction to Aesthetic Computing, Paul Fishwick, 25 pages.

• (2) Craig Harris. Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program , Leonardo Books, 1999, ISBN: 0-262-08275-6. An Archeology of Sound: An Anthropology od Communication, Paul De Marinis, pages 164 - 184

• (3) Rachel Greene. Internet Art. Thames and Hudson, World of Art, June 2004. ISBN: 0500203768. Introduction pages 8 - 19, Chapter 2, Isolating the Elements, pages 73 - 118.

• (4) Sally Yeates Sedelow. The Computer in the Humanities and Fine Arts. ACM Comput. Surv., 2(2): 89 - 110, 1970.

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Research questions

• Analysis/synthesis– Pattern recognition and analysis in art

architecture, music, literature– Construction or synthesis

• Representation (Sedelow70)

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Research questions

• Aural or auditory– Music is the art form which has been most

amenable to be computer-aided• Visual• Tactile (Seddelow70)

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Research question

• Data storage: Communication between the humanist and computer scientist may well be easier as to data representation and input than as to internal data storage and manipulation. In fact computer- aided tasks undertaken by humanists require the same range of conceptual models and storage structures as do computer-aided projects in other disciplines: arrays, lists, trees, ..., and matrices. But for the humanist who is quite comfortable with the notion of a table of words may be quite baffled by the word array in a software context, and the computer scientist may be equally put off by the word style, or by the words such as tone and texture associated with it (Seddelow70)

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Research questions

• Representing programs and data structures with specific notations

• Incorporate artistic methods in computer science activities• Improving the emotional and cultural interaction with the

computer (Fishwick)

• Aesthetic being the philosophy of art• Art and creativity• Computer science

– ACM and IEEE– Discrete mathematics

• Ars electronica 2003 computer code as raw material for art• http://processing.org/

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Research question

• Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program (Harris)

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Research questions

• How computers and internet have influenced art– Net.art– The importance of critique– Email– Collective projects– Browser art– Authorship– Avatar (Greene)

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Preliminary lessons learnt

• Software architecture of the algorithmic music system ImproSculpt

• “Eventually frustrated with the amount of “collateral” work associated with further development of the system, Brandsegg decided to give up developing the old source code any further, and rather start with a new and more structured approach. This is where our project met his.”

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Software architecture

• Structure and quality attributes– Performance (*)– Modifiability (*)– Availability (*)– Usability– Security– Testability

• Quality tactics

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An architecture

• ... Is shaped by some collection of functional, quality, and business requirements. We call these shaping requirements architectural drivers

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Preliminary lessons learnt

• Provided that software has influenced algorithmic composition, the general research question in this work is: – “how does algorithmic composition constrain and shape

software?”– “which qualities will software for algorithmic composition

have?” • The concrete goal of this project is

– to design and implement and improved software architecture of the algorithmic composition system Improsculpt.

• Through participation to this development project, the candidates will get insights in the system as well as empirical data which can be used to answer the research questions

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Preliminary lessons learnt

• Motivation: (some) students love to work with Improsculpt and artists in general

• Creativity and constraints• Do and observe• Programs and models

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Future work

• Sacco software art creativity community openess. Proposal submitted to NFR (2 PhD + 1 post Doc) with Falanx/Arm

• Choose/develop one software system at IDI• Work for artists as with Improsculpt

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Do - observeChallenges ahead

• “One of the challenges with this project has been finding a balance between devoting time to our research goal and working towards the concrete software goals. The two sets of goals have been, if not contradictory, then at least complementary. Our research goal has been observing how architecture is shaped by this kind of software, while the more concrete project goal has been to improve the software itself.”