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Topic: how to attract artists and designers to P5? (Read 4438 times) |
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arielm
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how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« on: Aug 17th, 2003, 7:49pm » |
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I would like to establish a space (starting with this thread) where to discuss strategies and concepts that could help in motivating artists and designers to give a try to proce55ing and to new-media programming in general!
My motivation comes from the will to give proce55ing workshops together with co-brainstormer heidi.
And beyond our personal motivations, i guess all this could be profitable to proce55ing in general...
This new thread can be approached as an extension to the following one:
http://proce55ing.net/discourse/yabb/board_general_action_displ_ay_num_1056913369.html
Note that it's a 2 pages-long thread but it worth reading as it is full of insights that will probably be re-used here...
There, it was about what to teach to new-media students in the context of a college cursus, while here it should be more about how to deal with a population already experimented with new media and how to "convince" that programming can be useful at some point.
The main difference being that here the crucial "motivation" or "convincing" stage can not be done within a class but rather by distance (for example through a website...)
I guess it's not a trivial issue at all since communicating with an audience in this fashion is a challenge which brings us directly to interaction design (a.k.a experience design) issues!
And well, maybe it's even a problem to consider that the initial "motivation stage" should be something that we have to deal with. Afterall, we could just leave it to the interested people, no
Otherwise, we could be accused of paternalism ("we know what's good for you") or even evangelism ("you will reach new heights only with programming").
So... dealing only with the ones that made the step of willing to discover what's on the other side of the mirror
Maybe the best solution would be to simply point the "target audience" to the proce55ing website (which already has a pretty good motivation factor) and hope it will be okay!
But then will it be enough to provoke such reactions:
on Jul 22nd, 2003, 6:57am, mike wrote:| The Director class woke up something huge in me -- the need to know HOW the code worked. It was the catalyst that suddenly let all my preconceived ideas of interactivity fly out the door, and made me realize that with programming comes power, and inifinite possibilities. As an interactive designer, you sculpt and create the rulesets for interactivity. It made me want to know code. |
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Hmm... not sure, since Mike's insight seems to be the fruit of a very strong experience, for instance a successful class on programming.
But what we would like to achieve here is more complicated since a strong enough insight has to be "provoked" (without the face-to-face advantage) in order to give the will to go further and take a course or a workshop (or to try proce55ing at home, for the super-motivated among the motivated!)
Solutions..
Afterall: could it be possible to create a kind of "Understanding Programming" website, full of interactive experiences that would serve the goal of democratizing and demystifying new-media programming
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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Martin
    
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #1 on: Aug 18th, 2003, 6:53pm » |
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letting the works do the talking seems to work great. 
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #2 on: Aug 18th, 2003, 10:42pm » |
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martin, i agree that the works will do part of the talking but i would like to find a more active way anyway.
otherwise it's just being passive and hope things will be okay!
or maybe your proposition means not to be passive but rather being more respectful of the audience (i.e. not entering into propaganda and evangelism in favor of programming)?
back to planning: i was thinking of a website proposing some experiences (i.e. not only information)...
well, it's more complicated: an information space through its architecture is already proposing an experience to the audience but i would like to push things a bit further, beyond what's possible to achieve with, say, print and with classic hypermedia...
one of the options i'm thinking about is to include an online programmable environment:
imagine a web page containing:
1) a code entry textbox
2) an execution window
3) a "run" button
after a quick check, it happens that all this exist already, and not only that it exists it can be considered as the ancestor of proce55ing!
ladies and gentlemen please welcome DBN (a.k.a Design by Numbers):
http://dbn.media.mit.edu/dbn
well... it seems that it simplifies visual programming to the most minimal form and that a lot of efforts have been put into it...
but personally, i wouldn't use it as a standalone online tool (i.e. a tool not used in a classroom context) because i think it lacks some "sex appeal" and i'm not sure artists or designers would want to give it a try!
or maybe it's a matter of building the correct framework around it, with for example some cool applets that would be both runnable and both modifiable?
but it seems that DBN can't technically produces the usual proce55ing stuff (with colors, 3d, pixels: all these things that do have sex appeal!)
anyway, starting from scratch, it could be possible to use a mix of javascript and java to produce something viable (to be checked more deeply).
javascript being used as the scripting language, coupled with an "executing java applet" with basic pixel-buffering and 3d capabilities.
there could be a basic set of cool demos, all extendable by the users and even an option to create a code repository.
the purpose of all this would be to provide the audience an instantaneous playground that could help in demystifying programming and eventually create the motivation to go further with more serious tools, like proce55ing!
feedback would be more than welcome!
a+
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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benelek
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #3 on: Aug 19th, 2003, 3:52am » |
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often, really cool sketches are posted with some great ideas.
just as often, it's such an effort to go through the code to figure out exactly how the effect is achieved, that the effort just isn't worth it - no matter how motivated you are!
i'd really appreciate it if people started explaining a little of the behind-the-scenes when they post. short & simple, conversational explanation would be very helpful, both to the board and those posting.
from the perspective of someone self-teaching, this seems like a relatively simple way of gaining much with minimum effort - as i said, both for those reading and for those posting.
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #4 on: Aug 20th, 2003, 12:21am » |
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thanks benelek for your participation, but at a first sight, your point seems off-topic to me since i'm talking about an audience which is at least two step before you stand: never really programmed and didn't download proce55ing yet.
alternative interpretation: you mean that in the context of the mini-pseudo-proce55ing-online-programmable-environment i'm proposing, it would be nice to have these "cool demos with source code" coming with some additional information?
all this make sense to me, since it ressembles the current (and successful) way of doing things within the proce55ing community: people posting links to their new work through the forum (sometimes with some crusty additional info, sometimes not...)
but listening to your complaint, it seems that people are not enough doing it (adding some additional info about how things work etc.)
so in the context of what i'm proposing, it could be translated to:
- an option for users to post new code plus hypertext (including additional info, links, etc.)
- as a policy: if the info part is considered "weak" by the site's moderator, he would add some more (or just transpose the newly posted code into a broader context... maybe introducing some meta-data scheme at the global level of the site could help...)
does it make sense?
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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Martin
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #5 on: Aug 20th, 2003, 2:40pm » |
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on Aug 18th, 2003, 10:42pm, arielm wrote:martin, i agree that the works will do part of the talking but i would like to find a more active way anyway.
otherwise it's just being passive and hope things will be okay!
or maybe your proposition means not to be passive but rather being more respectful of the audience (i.e. not entering into propaganda and evangelism in favor of programming) |
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from my experience, people still view 'demo or die' as the best way to convince others about their ideas. perhaps this is what i meant. people like to see pretty stuff instead of just blocks of text or listening to speeches/lectures; unless delivered in a non-standard manner. i think that the demo culture still lives on.
this then makes me wonder. which works better a structured or non-structured online resource
re: mini-pseudo-proce55ing-online-programmable-environment
this is coming up.
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #6 on: Aug 20th, 2003, 8:59pm » |
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on Aug 20th, 2003, 2:40pm, Martin wrote:| this then makes me wonder. which works better a structured or non-structured online resource |
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i guess having both of them is what works the best.
on Aug 20th, 2003, 2:40pm, Martin wrote:re: mini-pseudo-proce55ing-online-programmable-environment
this is coming up |
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when where (or my limited english-expressions knowledge is fooling me)
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #7 on: Aug 22nd, 2003, 1:34am » |
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argh! (i.e. it won't be so easy to create a subversion that will irresistibly cause innocent web surfers to start coding!)
made a simple applet with pixel-buffer capabilities and asked javascript to fill 1000 pixels...
it only takes almost one second (sic).
javascript to java communication is so slow that i don't know if i should laugh or cry.
not discouraged yet, i found rhino (a javascript interpreter for java)... well, the only problem is that its .jar file is around 500KB (another sic please).
so bye bye dreams, or is it only the first dragon to pass in the quest?
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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Martin
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #8 on: Aug 22nd, 2003, 5:59am » |
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re: mini-pseudo-proce55ing-online-programmable-environment
hernando has come up with a courseware for p5. this will be up for public consumption soon. else, please contact him or casey.
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #9 on: Aug 22nd, 2003, 2:52pm » |
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casey wrote somewhere:
"hernando barragan has developed courseware for automating uploading files and generating web pages for workshops and courses. i hope this can be a general purpose tool for educators. it runs on php and mysql."
but it seems a bit different from an online-programmable-environment, no?
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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pollux
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #10 on: Aug 26th, 2003, 11:13am » |
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Q: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
A: i say:
- infomercials?
- spamming?
- eBay bids?
- honey?
(sorry, couldn't resist...)
again, i'll say:
why do you want to convince a lot of people about using processing?
i am guessing one of the routes the discourse is taking has to do with "how to learn processing more effectively". i would like to see that happening.
but i believe that exposure is enough. most of us (them?) know what we want. when i saw processing, i knew i wanted a piece of that. maybe i was prepared, maybe it was the right moment. maybe i was mature for processing, enough actionscript and javascript to understand the language, enough coding abilities not to start from scratch, not enough knowledge of java to be able to start from it.
i think processing is great. it lets me do things in an easy way, things i did not know i could do. but it is not a religion. other people can do the same stuff, better stuff, newer stuff, nicer stuff, awful stuff, with other programs.
imho, if you start to show it around, it'll catch (think if you build it, they will come). if you start to "sell" it's virtues left and right, they'll get scared. (think PTL evangelism).
word of mouth, buzzing it around. exposing interested people to the website. workshops, congresses, events, parties, schools. it has worked, it's working, it'll work.
and then, whoever wants to use it, will use it, and whoever doesn't, won't. their choice. but being exposed to it means having the knowledge that leads to the power of choice.
after all, it is just a program, isn't it?
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| « Last Edit: Aug 26th, 2003, 11:14am by pollux » |
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pollux | www.frwrd.net
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #11 on: Aug 27th, 2003, 1:19am » |
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so pollux, you rejoin martin when he says:
Quote:| letting the works do the talking seems to work great |
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which is pretty close to one half of me feeling that all this story sounds just like propaganda, brain washing, marketing, evangelism, etc.
(but it could just be a semantic problem and the key may be to avoid using terms like "convincing", in favor of terms like "enabling"...)
anyway, there's a subtle point out there that worth to be discussed:
people have been seeing cool new-media stuff and will continue to see cool new-media stuff everywhere and everytime but i think it's not enough as an eventual "trigger" (please turn on the semantic-problem-sniffer on that last term!)
but again: why would i want to provoke insights, triggers, etc. in new-media designers and artists minds anyway?
not easy to formulate... i feel that something is stuck (at least in the field of interactive), and i also feel there's an opportunity with proce55ing to put the finger on something important but that could easily be missed (e.g. by letting the things happening alone...)
close your eyes for a second and think about:
- adobe
- macromedia
- apple
- microsoft
huge impression, no? i mean how much these 4 corporates are shaping the whole "new-media" idea as we know it!
now, pollux says something like "processing is just a piece of software afterall"...
i agree, but then these 4 corporates are also "just companies producing software afterall"!
so is it so trivial? or "making software" could mean something huge nowadays?
well, a bit mish-mash all this i agree (it's late!)
so one last word about the beautiful thing with proce55ing that could easily be missed:
i hope P5 is not only going to be another cool multimedia integrated development environment (that would compare to flash) with a community of users that are going to produce stuff within a given frame.
i wish P5 could also play as a "role model" for users, showing that a small team, using programming, can invent new tools and new languages and that is, i guess, the key to some new heights in the development of interactive new-media...
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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vent
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #12 on: Aug 30th, 2003, 12:10am » |
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Non-digital artists are often intimidated by programming. Extremely well written tutorials that make the transition from painting to p5 as gratifying as possible might help....
there was something else I wanted to post about this but I seem to have forgotten it 
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http://www.shapevent.com/
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #13 on: Aug 31st, 2003, 11:20pm » |
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on Aug 30th, 2003, 12:10am, zevan wrote:| Non-digital artists are often intimidated by programming. Extremely well written tutorials that make the transition from painting to p5 as gratifying as possible might help.... |
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Personally, these days, after passing a few dragons, i'm more in the "online playground" wagon than in the "tutorials" one...
Decoded: i've started to implement an online javascript engine that hopefully will be able to program java environments:
The most obvious of these environments could be something similar to proce55ing. In such a case, the purpose would be to provide a very accessible (i.e. by simply entering a web page) and playable preview of the "real thing".
Another interesting direction:
Finding an artist/designer interested in building an interactive online environment. Proposing her/him to take in count from the early design stages the programmability of the environment by the audience (the goal being to create an interactive space which is as open as possible).
In parallel, proposing to an experienced programmer an unique creation experience.
And finally, giving a workshop _ mixing the two "populations" _ that will be the starting point for some eventual fruitful collaborations...
An additional, related, direction:
Imagine an online enviroment, for example a kind of self-running simulation.
In parallel of this running simulation, a programming interface is given, enabling to run within the same space and eventually interact with it.
It could turn the programming experience into a real action game!
(I guess it doesn't sound so clear!)
Imagine that everytime you were running a proce55ing piece of code, a space invader game would show, running in parallel of your program...
Make any sense
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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arielm
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Re: how to attract artists and designers to P5?
« Reply #14 on: Sep 5th, 2003, 1:24am » |
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on Aug 31st, 2003, 11:20pm, arielm wrote:Imagine an online enviroment, for example a kind of self-running simulation.
In parallel of this running simulation, a programming interface is given, enabling to run within the same space and eventually interact with it.
It could turn the programming experience into a real action game!
(I guess it doesn't sound so clear!)
Imagine that everytime you were running a proce55ing piece of code, a space invader game would show, running in parallel of your program...
Make any sense |
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The wonderful new "Tracking" piece by Robert Hodgin (viewable in the Exhibition a.k.a Software part of this site) can help understanding this concept:
something is affecting the environment (in occurence, affecting the pixel-buffer), and your piece of code is trying to analyse and react in parallel.
now this "something" could be, instead of being a real-time web-cam input, some pre-recorded video, or something totally procedural (back to the space-invader example!)
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Ariel Malka | www.chronotext.org
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