Tuesday 4 November 2008

London Knowledge Lab - Institute of Education
23 - 29 Emerald St
London
WC1N 3QS

Nearest tubes: Holborn, Russell Square or Chancery Lane.

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@paul-brown.com

RULES: algorithms | structures | intuition

2:30 pm for the afternoon session (RSVP necessary)

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: From Vector to Vertex - A non-deterministic Journey.

Paul Prudence is an artist and real-time visual performer (VJ) working with generative/computational systems, audio responsive visual feedback and processed video. He is also a writer, researcher and lecturer in the field of visual music and computational synaesthetic Art.

Paul will be talking about his own work in detail, beginning with early generative mathematically based works done in Flash to more recent work using the video synthesis toolkit VVV including his sound responsive signal-feedback works.

Paul is contributor to a number of books dealing with computational design and generative art. Recent exhibitions/performance in which his work has been included are Artificial Emotion 3.0 in São Paulo, > Tomorrow Now - Engage the Code in Venice, Code in Motion in Turin and Hacktronic in Boston US.

Having recently completely a small tour of gigs in Holland, the US and France he will also be talking about his real-time software based VJ performances in the club environment.

• transphormetic.com
• http://dataisnature.com

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.

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.

• slub.org