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Mark, Sorry it took a while to write back on this, but that last message somehow skipped my notice the first time around. I'll preface all this by saying I have no feathers and, thus, remain unruffled. I'm not trying to convince you of anything and I respect your point of view. In fact, I could let all of this slide without much bother, but that doesn't make for very interesting conversations, so I'll tackle a few points you brought up, only for the sake of entertainment. 1) processing is shitIt may well be. I don't know enough. It seems to me to be wide open and should allow many possibilities... I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with the tool. It's essentially Java, isn't it? Some cool shit I've seen done with processing made use of the RiTa toolkit (which is a java toolkit, so you don't really need processing at all). Of course, I'm generally predisposed to enjoy language-based art and RiTa is all about language-based art. Some student projects: http://www.rednoise.org/rita/rita_gallery.htm 2) programmers aren't artistI think that's insulting to both programmers and artists. Why should programmers and artists fit these little molds? Because it works well in the industry? That may be of great advantage to industry, but there is little gain to either programmers or artists. Programmers are not coding better programs because of this split and artist are not creating better art either. If Leonardo da Vinci were alive today, he'd be coding away. That's my model of an artist and not some romantic notion of the inspired individual working from emotion and fighting the good fight against reason and the man. Your depiction of the programmer who delves into art only to produce some boastfull 'look what I can do' demo is a strawman. For every such coder, how many bleeding-art teenagers are strumming guitars and writing bad poetry in a vain and misguided effort to express some platitudes about their inner experience? And this leads us to our next point... 3) art has heartSome art has heart. Some art has too much heart. Some very good art has no heart at all. I don't believe it matters. I don't think we should aim to express ourselves through our music, not only because it usually bores me, but mostly because I don't believe it's the most effective way of expressing ourselves. Words tend to work best, but even they have their limits. As a philosopher by training, and someone particularly interested in language, it is not without bias that I say that some of the twentieth century's most interesting advancements in the sphere of ideas are how we've dealt with the problem of ascribing meaning to linguistic behaviour. Ignoring all the details and pretending there is consensus in the field (ha!), the gist of it can be summed up in two points: 1) The words that are coming out of my mouth (or keyboard) have meaning only if they're interpreted by someone (and there's an external world we can both refer to). 2) The facts about my linguistic behaviour, do not determine a unique correct interpretation. There can be many and there's no way (in principle) to determine which is the correct interpretation (although some are better than others). I don't intend to demonstrate these points. If anyone is interested, I'll refer you to the appropriate literature. My point is that these ideas are out there. This sort of thing was picked up by scholars working with literature. After all, if normal linguistic behaviour does not have a single correct interpretation, a novel could have several as well. Today, literary criticism is rarely interested in the author's intentions... they're concerned with finding interpretations that fit all aspects of the work. Doesn't matter what the author was thinking about or what he was trying to express. It's a very creative academic pursuit. A similar development occurred in music with composers like John Cage who tried to remove themselves from the composition. I see this as their way of fighting the notion that composers expressed something through music. Cage did this through chance operations and ultimately, in 4'33", by creating a piece composed entirely of sounds unspecified by the composer. Any discussion of Cage's music is not concerned about his feelings or with trying to fathom what he was expressing, but rather with compositional techniques and meta-matters. For instance 4'33" demonstrates that a piece of music can be composed of absolutely any sounds, even those the composer does not explicitly specify. Absolutely no heart. It's not a terribly exciting piece in performance, but conceptually, it is a monster. Based on all this, I'm not particularly interested in what someone is trying to express in their music. Nor do I think only music that expresses something (i.e. has heart) is worthwhile. These days, a lot of the music that fascinates me involve algorithmic compositional processes. This is what I like and it's a matter of personal preference. You may not dig it, but there is no doubt that it's music regardless. 4) visual programming vs scriptingThere's a difference? I've played with both and I don't see a whole lot. The syntax is easier when dealing with boxes and wires, but syntax is never the main challenge in coding. If you prefer to draw a bunch of wires between three or four boxes on your screen instead of typing (define mix (+ in1 in2)) that's up to you. But don't fool yourself, this is not a more artful way of coding. In some ways it's very inelegant and can make basic staples of computation (e.g. recursion) difficult to implement. The learning curve is advantageous and so is the rapidity at which you can create a working prototype. In fact, the folks at Plogue use Bidule to prototype their projects before coding somewhere else. I've used Bidule a lot, because you can drop AU effects right into your code. That's nice. Turns out you can also do that with impromptu. The bonus in impromptu is that you don't have to deal with a bunch of wires and you can just code away (actually you can use wires if you want) . Seriously, I hate it when I have to cable a bunch of boxes together just to make a simple equation... Had I found this free software earlier on, I don't think I would've bought Bidule. However, coding visually or not is a matter of personal preference... have you come around, within one message, from shitting on programming to embracing it? I guess I didn't need to reply after all ;) Sylvain On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 3:00 PM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Sylvain Poitras > <sylvain.trombone@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Actually, processing is all about artsy visual, animation, interactive >> stuff. The sonifying processing project brings music into processing >> so you can mess with sound. > > > I have delved a for a few moments now... > > http://computermusicblog.com/blog/sonifyingprocessing/ > > and I must say that Im not terribly interested. Processing is primarily a > programmers tool. Of course more and more programming is required in many > forms of art, as the computer has become such a vital tool. I have tried > and > tried to program, and have struggled with Java and Action script, have > cut n > pasted in C in all its forms for game programming, Ive scripted Mobius... > and so it will be, and more so, I have no doubt... in the future... but > Ive > never become able to truly produce my dreams... > > Every so often Ive come back to Processing thru one arty video forum or > another, and... I must say... > > I have yet to see anything interesting done in Processing! > > (Ducks behind fire hydrant, spanner in hand). > Flash! yes, Game Engines... Oh my god YES! Even html yes yes yes.. > Processing seems to get people making... well.. tiny little visual > experiments... kind of nice.. but nothing really with any real conceptual > meat! > Its like in my company, the programmers sit in one room with PC's and the > designers sit in another with macs... and we all meet once in a while to > discuss what we need from each other...and you know, I think thats the > right > approach.. > When programmers try to produce art, its never Art, its always like a > demo > or a small "look what I can do" boast... (now I can feel Im really > ducking > molotov cocktails)... > To me, Art has heart. > In a way it why the beginning of my seach for a visual music tool, was > the > VJ world.. because this world is NOT ROCKET SCIENCE... they want an > instant > hit, instant satisfaction and immediate feedback, thats not art either, > but > certainly the immediacy of the VJ approach is more in tune with my > musical > world of improvisation, act and react. > > Having taken that route I have over shot the simplicity of these programs > and find that I do need something more complex and in depth, because Im > not > interested in doing the same as many before me...and have found myself > at a > place where I do need to learn some programming, but using a visual > programming approach, rather than scripting. > > hope I havent ruffled any feathers, and if people can point me in the > direction of some truly outstanding Processing stuff, then I cant wait > to be > amazed! > > m > > -- > Mark Francombe > www.markfrancombe.com > www.ordoabkhao.com > http://vimeo.com/user825094 > http://www.looop.no > twitter @markfrancombe >