SArt project @ NTNU The wall

Letizia Jaccheri

New media art and interactive art installations

• The use of digital technology in contemporary art is often referred to as new media art. Since the early 90s within the new media art realm there is a growing production of interactive art installations.

• These artworks are generally complex and they are heavily dependent on software for controlling the whole system. The production of the software often requires the involvement of programmers and software engineers.

Sonic OnyxArtist: Samir M’kadmi

Location: Blussvoll skole,Trondheim, Norway

FlyndreArtists: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Nils Aas

Location: StraumenInderøy, Norway

FlyndreArtists: ? Location: IT-building

NTNU Trondheim

software system

Business goals:-more money-more efficient

Software systeminput

output

An art installation as a software system

Software systeminput

output

Artistic goals:-reflection-emotion

Software is used in Interactive Installation Art for:

• 1) for controlling the numerous sensors that are capturing environmental parameters;

• 2) for incorporating the captured parameters into music/light that is played by the sculpture;

• 3) for maintaining an archive of the music generated in the past;

• 4) for presenting online of the artwork, the artist, the music archive and the software itself;

• 5) etc.

Algorithms

• Beauty?

J. Schmidhuber. Low-Complexity Art. Leonardo, Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, 30(2):97-103, MIT Press, 1997.http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/locoart/locoart.html

Complexity?

Learn to program with Art• size(200, 200); • background(127); • noStroke(); • for(int i=0; i<height; i+=20) { • fill(0); • rect(0, i, width, 10); • fill(255); • rect(i, 0, 10, height); • }

http://processing.org/

Learn to program with Art• void setup() • { • size(200, 200);• background(51); • noStroke(); • smooth(); • noLoop(); • }

• void draw()• { • draw_target(68, 34, 200, 10); • draw_target(152, 16, 100, 3); • draw_target(100, 144, 80, 5); • }

• void draw_target(int xloc, int yloc, int size, int num) • { • float grayvalues = 255/num; • float steps = size/num; • for(int i=0; i<num; i++) • { • fill(i*grayvalues);• ellipse(xloc, yloc, size-i*steps, size-i*steps); • } • }

http://processing.org/

SArt

• SArt – Software Engineering (SE) and Art• Currently involved in three software-intensive

Art projects

SArt team

http://prosjekt.idi.ntnu.no/sart/http://prosjekt.idi.ntnu.no/sart/

Salah

Letizia

Anna

Why SE and Art? (1)

• New– Other interdisciplinary fields (e.g. health, automotive)

have been addressed in SE research, we focus on Art

• Relevant– Contemporary Art is often highly software dependent

(e.g. new media art, interactive art installations, performative art, etc.)

– Emerging industries (e.g. Entertainment - game industry, music, web) often bring artists and software developers together

Why SE and Art? (2)• Useful– In Education – raising awareness, increasing the

tolerance, etc.– Foster Innovation and Creativity – Artists tend to use

newest technologies in innovative ways• Rigor– Use existing SE theories and methods, including

empirical studies– Identify particularities of the domain -> tailor the

existing SE theories, methods and tools to the specific needs of Art

Software Engineering and Art possibilities at NTNU

• TDT69 Artistic software: processes and products

• EiT Experts in team villages – 2008, 2006 – Art and Software– 2005 – Kunst og teknologi tør du?– 2004 – IT og Kunst

• Project works and Master thesis

the wall

?

– inspire reflection about IT with focus on openness, copyrights, and authorship.

– I want to learn something new and work with people at a deeper level, have fun

– and at the same time I am afraid of what I do not know and of ruining good relationships.

This presentation: structure• Sart project• The existing IDI wall

http://mediawiki.idi.ntnu.no/wiki/sart – Past and future

• The new wall, we should find a working name– why?– where?– what? – how?– who?

The IDI wall

• http://mediawiki.idi.ntnu.no/wiki/sart • 7. mai – ntnu videre kl. 18 NKUL

• 19-20 juni– http://ez.no/no/company/ez_conference_awards

lecture about openess and the wall

• June/Autumn Itovasjon and competition

The IDI wall lesson learnt and challeges

openness/copyrights/authorship• Openess for learning, motivation, energy, cooperation

about hardware (Elprint, CPU Atmel), network (IP), software (Java and Flash), copyrights and licences (BSD is the most free licence), local and global issues, estetic, working group, etc.

• Openess generates caos and frustration– Software: Java and Flash and Open source repository– Hardware: reconstruct the history– Cables – Roles: do we have an artist?– Who is the leader? Self confidence exercise, high creativity but

also paralysis since I depend on the good will and interest of people

about motivation

about cooperation

about challenges: Flash animation

the new wall: why?

• Make the town of trondheim (its inhabitants and vistors) reflect about IT with focus on openness, copyrights, and authorship– Both the wall itself and its content

• Names: – Trondheimsvegg– Trondheimsblogg– Myspace/facebook/playlist– ?

what? • Reconstruct the wall in wireless Trondheim• architect/artist (shape, size)• hardware engineer (hw) buy or make • software engineer

• reuse the idea of having one public IP and total openness for getting and sending info

• the wall behaves like a browser, it accepts sound, picture, video, and text• Technical issues, concurrency of access, time sharing• the wall records the story of what has been sent like a blog• users can see the content on the wall and hear sounds through IP enabled

devices like mobile phones• users can see the content of the wall and hear sound on their computers

through a browser• requirements, architectures, testing, maintenance, tools, open source

software,

how?

• add music, exploit wireless town• +• move the exiting one somewhere into town• Rebuild a similar one with IDI resources• buy a similar one, see the one at

Trondheimstorget • buy LCD screen(s)

who?• Artist

– Espen Gangvik teks? – Samir M'kadmi (Ulrika-Wallin Johansen 30th April)

• Architect?– knut.e.larsen@ntnu.no?– Åsmund G.

• Software programmer– Hallvard Trætteberg IDI– soundscape

• Hardware– group IDI?– Soundscape– Midgaard – Buy LCD or other

• sponsors

where?

• inside– museum/school– airport/train station – shopping mal– organization like StatoilHydro or IT company

• outside– Torget– …

To conclude

• We have a prototype at IDI which costed circa 200KNOK but a lot ot work was done by students and researchers. Hardware was donated by for example Atmel. We estimate 1 MNOK if professional services have to be bought. It will live its life at IDI. Effort required

• Shall I start the new wall project? Why? If yes, which are the next steps?