I sort of agree with you and disagree at the same time. I am an artist who
programs. I regard programming as my primary medium a form of writing. I
consider computers themselves to be a form of writing, an augmentation of
our capacity to make and interpret meaning. As an artist I put a lot of
value on the capacity of the individual to make a difference, as you seem to
do.
However, I think it is naïve to argue that individuals produce work of value
when isolated from others. Even when we are not aware of it we are part of a
large team of people. Newton stated that to achieve you need to stand on the
shoulders of giants. By this he meant that shifts in understanding require a
lot of prepatory work and the efforts of the many, not the few. He
recognised his theories depended on those of others.
I have worked with computers since the 1970¹s and am familiar with how some
of the chip-sets that have shaped the evolution of these systems have come
into being. In the late 1970¹s important steps were made in VLSI. This
depended on large teams of scientists, engineers and programmers creating
miracles of minutarisation. That sort of working pattern remains valid
today. It is important to remember that creating the technical systems that
allowed for all those transistors to be packed onto such small wafers of
silicon required major scientific and industrial resources. You cannot fly
to the moon with a few mates. As we have seen, it is a massive undertaking
requiring the dedicated human and material resources of nations. The same is
true in the development of other technologies in the development of ideas.
The invention of the web is (erroneously) laid at the feet of one person
(Berner Lees) but I think he would be the first person to admit that he
couldn¹t have done it without the trillions of Euro¹s spent on CERN, where
he worked. He was a product of that whole process. HTTP was too. The web is
a complex system. Robots are also extremely complex systems.
My son, who is 9, has built a few robots, programming them in Scratch and
NXT. He is lucky as his teacher is a professor of computing here in
Edinburgh and at Stanford. It is terrific to see him develop these skills at
a young age and you do not want to upset his apple-cart, but sometimes he
says it is easy to build robots. Happily, it is not difficult to show to him
the actual complexity of the systems he is only skimming the surface of.
When he recognises just how much is involved he is clearly struck with the
immensity of the task. Happily, he seems up for it. Perhaps I should send
him to Thailand?
In short, the creation of culture (including technology) is an activity that
involves us all.
Regards
Simon
Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
simon@littlepig.org.uk
www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
From: Francis Wittenberger <director@culturebase.org>
Reply-To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:40:21 +0700
To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] cyborgs skin and programmers
hi Simon,
i do not agree that "Programmers good enough to do this kind of work are
thin on the ground"
- while i am not saying that any 'web designer' is equipped to do
'robotics' but there are hundreds of thousand programmers who do
relative low-level programming and hardware - the problem is that there
is nobody around to define for them WHAT to do - this is what i mean by
'talkers' - for example on this and other 'new media forums' - most if
not all of those who discuss aren't able to define (to a programmer) what
they are talking about - in fact, i think even they probably have no
idea what they are talking about .. but their talk seems to enable
university and other grants, which they spend on living normal, non
artistic , non creative, middle class lives - that is the problem.
i would suggest to aggregate funds by not granting to those who are
unable to excel and define what what they are talking about , and
dedicate the rest of the money to programmers and engineers who
otherwise end up hungry on the commercial market just because they are
not good 'talkers' enough to get academic grants.
i also do not agree to the concept of "employing a single programmer is
not going to get you very far" - if you take a close look - every good
invention , just as any good software originate from a single mind or
a tiny team. every efficient software was written by one person. unlike
microsoft and alike who make money from deals and speculations creating
ever-in-progress waste they call 'software'.
compare that to the fact that every chip has tiny and efficient low
level code that is virtually 100% fully debugged and error free and is
result of work by a single programmer or a tiny team - this is why chips
and CPUs work unlike 'MS office' that is forever "one version short of
being finished"
no computer or phone , or a hard disk would work today without every
part being close to perfect on its own - the problem lies in the
inability of programmers to link with artists (or free their own mind by
other means), and the inability of academics and artists to pinpoint
what type of integrated sub-systems to compile of the parts;
the cases in which things work are the cases where the programmer was
somewhat an artist, or an artist who pushed himself to actually code his
creative thought.
i do agree that more then one person or programmer would be required to
realize a robotic project, but that is also true to publishing a book
for example - normally a small team lead by a visionary is the best way.
blindly accepting (or promoting) the idea that many top programmers and
lots of rare resources are a must to make an innovative step - is bad
for us who want to get down to the work and innovate - because every
time we approach an institute or company they think to themselves 'i better
keep distance from those crazy artists who need millions of dollars and
for their crazy future projects' - while in fact - no more then a team
of 3-4 developers and 1-2 artists are required to prototype ANY invention
and the funds can be as low as really basic requirements - after all,
true artists and creative people do what they do out of urge - and not
for the money :)
- -
regards from thailand,
francis
> Programmers good enough to do this kind of work are thin on the ground and
> valuable. I wish we had a few. I mean, we do, but they are all busily
> employed on well funded research projects and have very little time for more
> speculative and less well funded work. Those that do are special. We could
> do with a lot more.
>
> I missed your call for a robotics programmer so am not sure what you were
> looking for, but one observation I would make about development work in this
> field is that employing a single programmer is not going to get you very
> far. Robotics is one of the most multi-disciplinary and demanding of
> technical areas. You need different kinds of programmers for different
> aspects of the systems (sensing algorithms are very different to those
> required for motor control). You also need engineers with various skill-sets
> as well as specialists from other areas (computational linguistics, computer
> vision, networking, micro-electronics, psychology, etc).
>
> Regards
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
> simon@littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>
>
>
> From: <director@culturebase.org>
> Reply-To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:19:15 +0700
> To: <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] cyborgs skin and programmers
>
>
> Sawasdee
>
> re. Digital Skin
>
> MAF Thailand (2005)
> http://culturebase.org/home/thailand/MAF05/viewpage.php?menu_item=A_festival
> _theme
> http://culturebase.org/home/thailand/MAF05/viewpage.php?menu_item=B_maf_imag
> es
>
> re. Cyborgs discussion
>
> everybody here TALKING about cyborgs but funny enough there were ZERO
> programmers responding to my call "seeking hardcore programmer"
>
> i wonder what is this discussion all about and who is going to do the
> work;
>
> it seems there is not a single hardware engineer or a serious programmer
> reading this list - or?
>
> perhaps the heads of departments, historians, academics, philosophers and
> talkers should unite with a FUND to hire programmers to do something
> about all this talk..?
>
> hope to hear opinions
>
> best regards from thailand
> francis
>
> Re.
> > Hi Avi
> >
> > Thank you for your "Digital Skin".
> > If Cyberspace is our skin, our body is a Network-body and a flat
> > screen. If my memory is good, this made you say in a previous post
> > that we are all cyborgs. At the same time there is a resistance to
> > that. Actual matter resists to being resumed to digital matter.
> > Thickness resists to being resumed to 2-dimensions. Physical bodies
> > resist to being resumed to images. This resistence interests me.
> > Things are not just flowing. They also scratch and scream. And cyborgs
> > are not just the bright future of a superhumanity !
> >
> > In the 1970s, Jean-François Lyotard wrote about "The great ephemeral
> > skin" in his book Libidinal Economy (Theories of Contemporary
> > Culture). He was describing it as a carnal extrusion and a virtual
> > membrane where the world and our desires would meet. It is "ephemeral"
> > because it is in constant mutation. Cyberspace is like this "great
> > ephemeral skin", just as language is.
> >
> > Here is an intersting artwork where the human body is scanned,
> > fragmented and recomposed through machines and softwares which pervert
> > the idea of mapping (GoogleEarth)
> > http://www.locurto-outcault.com/index.html
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Stéphane
> >
> > Le 22 juil. 09 à 07:12, Avi Rosen a écrit :
> >
> > > Hi Stéphane,
> > > Very interesting subject "Epithelia, Creative Skins"...
> > > I made some artworks on this theme: "Digital Skin 2" -
> > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIO5bnV4i6E
> > >
> > > "The Cyberspace is an extension of the human foot, eye and the skin.
> > > The
> > > electronic gadgets and the data sphere are Galactic immediate Torus
> > > like
> > > extension of the human central nervous system, and the stage of
> > > 'Digital
> > > Skin' performance. It creates virtual extension of Marcel Duchamp's
> > > unfinished "Big Glass" piece, his voice (manipulated by the speed of
> > > light)on the video explains it. The transparent Cyberbody (digital
> > > mummy) is
> > > located eternally in cyberspace superposition. The departure and
> > > arrival are
> > > compressed to a singularity(Paul Virilio), on the digital skin's
> > > surface.
> > > 'Digital Skin 2' video sequence is bricolage of my endless virtual
> > > voyages (
> > > 'Digital Skin' is another example of such trajectory) in cyberspace,
> > > superimposing personal data on public data base (Goggle Earth and
> > > Sky). My
> > > body digital data strips, merged with the Earth and cosmos digital
> > > data
> > > strips produced by the satellites and telescopes. The digitalization
> > > of the
> > > universe and our body transformed it to a flat image displayed on the
> > > computer monitor ('Digital Skin').The digital video sequences are
> > > the MEME
> > > for further construction \deconstruction of cyber audiovisual mutual
> > > memory
> > > and universal knowledge."
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Avi Rosen,
> > >
> > >
> > > This is the first time I contribute to this discussion. I am a visual
> > > artist and art theorist. I am wrighting a book about skin as a
> > > creative process ( "Epithelia, Creative Skins", "Les peaux créatrices"
> > > in French).
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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