software

Scott Snibbe, Tripolar

The nearly 300 lines of code in Snibbe’s piece might overwhelm a viewer. Again the applet’s java is color-coded, but in this case, the colors mimic what one would expect to see in a good editor. This is the programmer’s view, color-coded according to the syntax of java itself. And

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Mark Wattenberg, Connect the Dots

Wattenberg’s code is the most compact of the three and he focuses our attention on that part of it that “daws the picture,” just 16 lines. There is something strange in the way he has made the code presentable by formatting it in HTML with color-coding, and then included in the code’s

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Mark Napeir, 3 Dots

Mark Napier’s 3 Dots code is expansive; some 600 odd lines are spread over three files, and he uses several additional external libraries as well.[13] Even more than Snibbe, Napier makes use of object-oriented strategies. With the Bitmap255 object he creates a visual system capable of drawing translucent lines. In SpringyObject he creates sub-classes for springs and masses that behave according to the laws of physics. An instance of the SpringyObject is a particular system of masses and springs whose elements, locations and velocities can be simulated over time. In the main body of code Napier sets up an instance of such a system (SpringyDots): one fixed mass and a group of 3 movable masses connected by three springs, of varying tension. The spring to the fixed mass is not made visible.

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January 28, 2010

Obama's State of the Union 2010 Visualized

President Barack Obama's State of the Union address has been analyzed and visualized at the State of the Union website. The address was delivered to Congress and the American people by the President on January 27th.

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Soft Monkey

Animal painting is popular again; the evidence is on YouTube. But it was popular in the Fifties and Sixties too and taken seriously by some in the art world and certainly by some biologists. Congo, the painting chimpanzee was a star.

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Journal of American Thought Crime

The question of what it is possible to think under the current regime of the United States, and what it might be possible to think sheltered from the threat of government surveillance is the journal's main concern. The Journal of American Thought Crime distributes a literary magazine in the form of an encrypted mailing list.

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Abu Ghraib

The infamous photos of Abu Ghraib came to light in 2004. Now, four years later, we are still debating the ethics of torture, and are still apparently unable to really process the contents of the images we received from the American dungeons of Iraq.

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Untitled (After Riley)

Clearly the desire for the same is operative in various ways in many domains: at the level of nationality, within the social, in terms of class, or by political identifications, subcultures, etc. Just as frequently, the desire for the same is challenged by its opposite: the desire for the different.

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Harmono

This work explores the possibilities within a single system for creating random highly variable curves based on a harmonograph simulation. The harmonograph was a popular scientific toy of the late 19th century (lately making a comeback in contemporary science museums) which drew complicated Lissajous figures by attaching a pen to a multidimensional pendulum.

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Super-Abstract: Software Art and a Redefinition of Abstraction

Abstraction is a prevalent tendency in software art and might be understood as an anachronistic return to the forms of high modernism, or alternatively, as a phenomenon that has its roots within the nature of software itself.

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