[spectre] CAS: November Meeting: RULES: algorithms | structures | intuition

[Paul Brown]

The Computer Arts Society is pleased to announce our November
event - a joint meeting with the MathArt Group.  The meeting is
open to the public and is free but please note that RSVPs are
essential for the afternoon session so we can pre-arrange
catering.

There is no need to RSVP if you are just coming to the 6:00 talk
and performance.

RSVP to paul at paul-brown.com

RULES:  algorithms | structures | intuition

Tuesday 4 November 2008
2:30 pm for the afternoon session (RSVP necessary)
London Knowledge Lab - Institute of Education
23 - 29 Emerald St
London WC1N 3QS, England
Tube:  Holborn, Russell Square or Chancery Lane
Map:   http://tinyurl.com/6h5cds


2:30 - registration & coffee
2:45 - Alan Sutcliffe
3:30 - Paul Prudence
4:15 - Janis Jefferies
5:00 - refreshments
5:30 for 6:00 for the evening performance and talk (no RSVP)
6:00 - Live Coding performance and talk by Slub
7:30 - ends


Alan Sutcliffe
Packing Circles, Dissecting Polygons, Animated

My association with the Bridges maths-arts conferences in the
last three years is outlined.

Doyle spiral circle packings are described and the problem of
their construction outlined. The first animation shows the
self-similarity within a packing using simple endless zooms. The
second animation shows some decorative uses.

A recursive method of dissecting any polygon into mainly
pentagons is described. The method is applied to single and
multiple polygons. Animations in which one variable is changed
gives perhaps surprising results including some 3d effects.

Alan Sutcliffe is sometime editor of PAGE, bulletin of the CAS, I
have always known more about maths and music than about anything
else, and took up computer graphics in the 1970s as a CAS member.


Paul Prudence
title and outline to follow


Janis Jefferies
Common Threads: re visiting a math/textile archive

Recognition of the relationship between mathematics, mathematical
forms and textiles has been substantially documented across a
variety of disciplines For example; the investigation of complex
binary systems of Inca knotted forms (Wilford, 2003), to knot,
braid and lace theory (Scharein 1998), the mathematical symmetry
of woven pattern forms (Washburn and Crowe, 2004), and crochet
(Kenning, 2005).

For example in String, and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing - JOHN
NOBLE WILFORD. (August 12, 2003) argues that In the conventional
view of scholars, most khipu (or quipu, in the Hispanic spelling)
were arranged as knotted strings hanging from horizontal cords in
such a way as to represent numbers for bookkeeping and census
purposes. The khipu were presumably textile abacuses, hardly
written documents.

Mathematicians often try to discover new facts regarding old
phenomena. New phenomena are rarely discovered but they do
determine different conditions under which old ones, Artists are
concerned with arranging phenomena in a manner that has not been
seen before, or perhaps to increase the spectators' awareness of
the phenomena. Often this involves complicating the effects
rather than simplifying them. Thus, mathematicians and scientists
rarefy and isolate phenomena to control them in abstract thought
or in a laboratory, whereas artists embrace complexity and
manipulate phenomena intuitively. The differences in method have
resulted in divergent  vocabularies for describing similar visual
effects, and the two approaches can appear more disparate than
their phenomenal commonality would suggest.

Janis Jefferies currently holds a Crafts Council Spark Plug
curating award that seeks to examine the creative and dynamic
relationship between mathematics, mathematical forms and craft
through an exploration of a particular maths and textile archive,
called Common Threads, that is held in the Constance Howard
Resource and Research Centre in Textiles, Goldsmiths, University
of London.

Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of
Visual Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University
of London, Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research
Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital
Studios.

Jefferies was trained as a painter and later pioneered the field
of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture,
internationally through exhibitions and texts. In the last five
years she has been working on technological based arts, including
Woven Sound (with Dr. Tim Blackwell) and has been a principal
investigator on projects involving new haptics technologies and
generative software systems for creating and interpreting arts
objects.

She is an associate researcher with Hexagram (Institute of Media,
Arts and Technologies, Montreal, Canada) on two projects,
electronic textiles and new forms of media communication in
cloth.

http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/staff/JJ.html


Slub
Dave Griffiths, Adrian Ward and Alex McLean

Dave, Adrian and Alex will introduce the emerging performance
practice of live coding -- writing and modifying software while
it runs, in order to improvise live music and video.  The history
of live coding will be introduced, along with contemporary live
coding platforms and fringe developments such as programming with
a game pad and controlling synthesisers with onomatopoeia.

Slub sound emerges from slub software; melodic and chordal
studies, generative experiments and beat processes. Process-based
sonic improvisations; live generative music using hand crafted
and live coded apps, scripts and l-systems in networked
synchrony. With roots in UK electronica and tech culture, slub
build their own software environments for creating music in
realtime. Only custom composition and DSP software is used.
Everything you hear is formed by human minds.

Slub project their screens so that the audience are able to
appreciate their live software development process, which does
not adhere to industry quality control standards. They
communicate using OSC over UDP and eyebrow gestures. The output
ranges from extra slow gabba, through intelligent ambient to acid
blues glitch.

Slub have performed widely across Europe including Sonic Acts
Amsterdam, Sonar Barcelona, Club Transmediale Berlin, leplacard
London and Ultrasound Huddersfield.

Alex McLean is a member of slub and PhD student in Arts and
Computational Technology at Goldsmiths College. He co-organises
the dorkbotlondon meetings of people doing strange things with
electricity, helps run the runme.org software art repository, and
is a member of the TOPLAP organisation for the proliferation of
live algorithm programming.

Adrian Ward is a member of slub, a very part-time software artist
and technical director of a company specialising in software for
interactive experiences. For eight years he ran Signwave, an
eclectic software company, using it as an excuse to do whatever
he felt, whenever he liked, but had to get a proper job once he
got a mortgage. He is a member of TOPLAP, did Grade 4 on the
trumpet, and still enjoys the occasional weird electronic noise.

Dave Griffiths is a member of slub, and has been writing programs
to make noises, pictures and animations using a variety of
languages for many years. He is the author of many free software
projects exploring these areas, and uses much of it in
performances and workshops around europe. He is part of the
Openlab free software artists collective and TOPLAP. He lives in
London where he makes computer games.

http://slub.org/


2008 is CAS 40 - 40 years of supporting the computer arts

http://www.computer-arts-society.org


====
Paul Brown - based in the UK Aug-Dec 2008
mailto:paul at paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
UK Mobile +44 (0)794 104 8228 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
Skype paul-g-brown
====
Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
====