DASH Archives - January 2009

Forwarded from Diatrope (see subscription info below)

Dear Diatrope,

Now you can see several paintings in Google Earth, at a stunning 14- 
billion-pixel resolution. The amazing images are 14 gigapixels, 1,400  
times the resolution of a 10 megapixel camera.

A video (on the left of the page) shows how they used a machine- 
controlled digital camera and algorithms to compensate for deformation  
and stitch the final result. On the right, a popup should appear  
(similar to Google maps) which allows you to zoom in.

http://maps.google.es/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http://pradomuseum.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/themasterpieces.xml&utm_campaign=es&utm_medium=lp&utm_source=es-lp-emea-es-gns-mp&utm_term=prado

Michael

--------------------------------------------------
Michael Douma
Executive Director
Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement
http://www.idea.org/
Michael.Douma@idea.org
--------------------------------------------------

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====
Paul Brown - based in the Germany Jan - Feb 2009
mailto:paul@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
====
Artist in Residence, compArt Project - Bremen University
====

The Computer Arts Society is please to announce its first talk
for this New Year featuring the computer music pioneer Peter
Zinovieff.  The talk will be held at our new venue - the London
Knowledge Lab.  Please note we have also changed our meetings to
'the first Wednesday of the month!'


Wednesday 4 February 2009
6:30 for 7:00pm
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

Peter Zinovieff
Music and Geology or Geology, Electronic Music and Opera?

The talk is about three enterprises of excellence that I have
been intimately involved in. I describe my making the first
geological map of the Cuillins mountains in Skye (1958), the
problems of my early computers (1960’s) in electronic music
contrasted to some present day experiments (2008), and the
preparation of my libretto for “The Mask of Orpheus” (1984)  by
Birtwistle.

I show that these wildly different endeavours are not so
dissimilar when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of their
actual creation.

The lecture of 40 minutes is accompanied by archive videos,
sounds and slides, as well as a display of rocks, pictures and
electronic objects.


Peter Zinovieff is a pioneer of electronic and computer music.
He is a British inventor of Russian ethnicity, most notable for
his EMS company, which made the famous VCS3 synthesiser in the
late '60s. The synthesiser was used by many early progressive
rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise, Krautrock groups
like Kraftwerk as well as more pop oriented artists, a good
example being David Bowie.

Zinovieff also wrote the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera
The Mask of Orpheus.


CAS 1968-2009 - supporting the Computer Arts for over 40 years
http://www.computer-arts-society.org

Future CAS meetings:

Wed 4 Mar - Francesca Franco
Wed 1 Apr - Joel Pathmore
Wed 6 May - Jorn Ebner

====
Paul Brown - based in the Germany Jan - Feb 2009
mailto:paul@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
====
Artist in Residence, compArt Project - Bremen University
====

Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage
DOCAM International Summit 2008

Those who might have missed DOCAM's Fourth International Summit, which  
took place last October 30 and 31 in Montreal, now have the chance to  
view the videos of the presentations, all available on the DOCAM  
Research Alliance's website: Documentation and Conservation of the  
Media Arts Heritage:
http://www.docam.ca/en/?Repere=200901&p=389

====
Paul Brown - based in Germany Jan - Feb 2009
mailto:paul@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
====
Artist in Residence, compArt Project - Bremen University
====

Sent to both CAS and DASH lists (please forward to interested people/ 
lists)

Does anyone on this list have any information about:

Computer Art Competition
ACM National Conference
27 - 29 August, 1968
Las Vegas, Nevada
Fist Prize - "One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" by Manfred  
Schroeder

Also Schroeder published papers about making this work in the ACM  
Journal and IEEE Spectrum in 1968/69 - these don't appear to be online?

Can anyone help?  paul@paul-brown.com

Thanks
Paul

====
Paul Brown - based in Germany Jan - Feb 2009
mailto:paul@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
====
Artist in Residence, compArt Project - Bremen University
====

Forwarded from the empyre forum (see end for details):

FIRST SCREENING
bpNichol
http://vispo.com/bp

In 1983 and 1984, bpNichol used an Apple IIe computer and the Apple  
BASIC
programming language to create First Screening, a suite of a dozen
programmed, kinetic poems. He distributed First Screening through
Underwhich, an imprint he started in 1979 with a small group of poets.  
The
Underwhich edition of First Screening consisted of 100 numbered and  
signed
copies distributed on 5.25" floppies along with printed matter.

However, the Apple IIe soon became obsolete and the poems became  
essentially
inaccessible. But in 1992, four years after the death of bpNichol, J. B.
Hohm, a student at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, began
creating a HyperCard version of First Screening with the approval of  
Ellie
Nichol, bp's widow, and with assistance from Dennis Johnson and Fred  
Wah. In
1993, Red Deer College Press published it on a 3.5" floppy disk for the
Macintosh computer.

The HyperCard version of First Screening was a careful re-creation and
recoding of the original, and it extended the life of First Screening  
a few
more years. Still, HyperCard eventually died, leaving the poems  
unavailable
to all but the few who owned a functioning old Mac or an even older  
Apple
IIe and a readable diskette (unlikely, since the usual lifetime of a
diskette is approximately five years). In 2004, Apple stopped selling
HyperCard, and OSX's Classic mode was the last Mac operating system on  
which
it was possible to view HyperCard works.

So we are very happy to present to you four different versions of First
Screening.

1. The original DSK file of the Underwhich edition with a freely
downloadable Apple IIe emulator (available for PCs and (maybe) Macs),  
along
with scanned images of the printed matter distributed with the  
Underwhich
edition. This version is closest to the original.

2. An online JavaScript version of First Screening created by Marko  
Niemi
and Jim Andrews.

3. A streaming Quicktime movie of the emulated version.

4. The original HyperCard version, which may, perhaps, become easier  
to view
in the future via a HyperCard Player emulator or some other means. We've
also included scans of the printed matter of this version.

This project has taken us almost three years. We've learned much about
bpNichol's First Screening and how the destiny of digital writing  
usually
remains the responsibility of the digital writers themselves. As a  
group and
individually. This project illustrates that work can indeed survive the
obsolescence of technologies if others are still interested in the  
work and
the artist has provided what is required to implement the work using  
later
technologies. bpNichol originally created 100 copies of First  
Screening and
distributed them widely, which was important to the propagation of the
bitstream. Fortunately, the source code was relatively easy to extract  
and
fairly simple to understand. First Screening is some of the earliest
programmed, kinetic poetry. This historical significance, together  
with the
quality of the work itself and bpNichol's literary stature (he was  
awarded
Canada's highest literary honour in 1970), have also motivated us to
complete this project.

The recovery started in 2004 when Lionel Kearns showed Jim Andrews the
HyperCard version on an old Mac. Lionel also had three 5.25" floppy  
disks
bpNichol had given him. Jim took those floppies to Information  
Services at
the University of Victoria, Canada, where Jeff Rivett, a data analyst,
recovered the data using his own functioning Apple IIe at home.

That version of First Screening turned out to be incomplete; Barrie  
Nichol
must have given Lionel these disks while still writing the piece. Geof  
Huth
[1] recognized that the disk was missing some of the poems in the  
published
version and that Lionel's disk presented the remaining poems in a  
different
order. In an attempt to preserve these poems, Geof had stored his 5.25"
floppy of the Underwhich edition carefully, made a silent videotape of  
the
poems as they played on the Apple IIe, and printed out the source  
code. He
could no longer view his floppy, since he no longer had an Apple II  
series
computer, but the printout and the video indicated that three poems were
missing from Lionel's draft copy: "Reverie," "Any of Your Lip," and
"Off-Screen Romance," along with some initial and final bibliographic
matter.

Following unsuccessful efforts by the University of Albany to recover  
the
data from Geof's 5.25" floppy of the Underwhich edition, Geof shipped  
the
floppy from New York to Dan Waber and Jason Pimble in Pennsylvania.  
Dan and
Jason were able to recover the full version from Geof's 22-year-old  
floppy
using a functioning Apple IIe computer and a range of open source  
software.

O ye digital poets: the past of the art is in your hands and it is you  
who
must recover and maintain it. Although the history of digital  
archiving is
more than two decades old, most professional archivists have little  
interest
or training in the process of preserving and ensuring functional  
access to
digital materials. For instance, although bpNichol's work is archived at
Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, no one there had or could copy the
data from the Underwhich edition floppy to contemporary media. They  
were not
uninterested, however, and many thanks to Tony Power for trying.

The secret to this project has been a combination of passion and  
knowledge.
None of us understood the entirety of the situation facing us at the  
outset.
Each of us brought a different set of skills to the task, and all of us
brought our love of Nichol's work and our desire to make sure that  
others
could once again see these early digital poems. We hope our efforts  
prove
worth it for those who visit these pages now and into the future.

Jim Andrews
Geof Huth
Lionel Kearns
Marko Niemi
Dan Waber
March 2007

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


====
Paul Brown - based in Germany Jan - Feb 2009
mailto:paul@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
====
Artist in Residence, compArt Project - Bremen University
====