From 7 to 11 July 2008, I gave a workshop at the newly inaugurated Fondazione Claudio Buziol in Venice, Italy. The Fondazione is located in the stunning Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana (built in 1751), which faces the Grand Canal. The student’s wrote software in Processing that related to the dual themes of Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” and the city of Venice. With one exception, I was working with students of Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor from the IUAV University of Venice. (Gillian is the former director of the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and the Computer Related Design course at the Royal College of Art, London. I was a professor in Ivrea from 2001 to 2003 and it was wonderful to see her again.) There are more photos on Flickr.

My Programming Media 2 class (it will be called Interactive Media 2 next year) has finished its Goldbergian Voting Machine. The project was an experiment in democracy carried out by a group of nineteen students who worked together for eight weeks to produce a fully functional voting machine comprised of nineteen individual modules. The modules communicated through either physical or electrical signals which carried a vote through each of the modules until it reached the final destination where it was archived.

The project brief follows:

The cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1893 - 1970) is know for his drawings of absurd, complicated machines that perform simple tasks. His name has become synonymous with these artifacts. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states:

Main Entry: Rube Gold·berg
Variant(s): also Rube Gold·berg·i·an
Function: adjective
Etymology: Reuben (Rube) L. Goldberg died 1970 American cartoonist
: accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply <a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption…with five hundred moving parts — L. T. Grant>; also : characterized by such complex means

The Wikipedia entry for “Rube Goldberg Machine” provides a good summary of how his ideas have influenced popular culture. Type “rube goldberg” as a keyword at YouTube or Google Video to see some hobby projects.

While the mechanical complexity of Goldberg’s machines has survived into the twenty-first century, the satirical component of his work has not. Goldberg’s machines are viewed most interestingly as a metaphors for absurd mechanisms within society and inherent in technological progress. One of the first uses of the adjective “Rube Goldbergian” was within the Congressional Record. Lawmakers referred to the opposing parties projects such as the “New Deal” and the “Great Society” disparagingly as “Rube Goldbergian.” (1) For example, a Rube Goldbergian scheme for reducing taxes. Clark Kinnarid, in his introduction to Rube Goldberg vs The Machine Age says that Goldberg regarded his “‘inventions’ as manifestations of a one-man insurrection against needlessly multifarious gadgetry of the machine age that enslaves man instead of freeing him from non-rewarding labor.” (2)

The technologies that appear in Goldberg’s work are from his era: automobiles, electric fans, gramophones, bicycle pumps, oil lamps, hand guns, radios. What are the “needless multifarious gadgetry” of the information age. What technologies would comprise the contemporary Goldbergian device? Possibly a mobile phone, keyboard, light sensor, laser printer, RFID card, video game, brand-name products, ASCII characters?

The Goldbergian context provides an excellent foundation for learning about the concepts of interactivity and the technologies required to make interactive projects. During the next eight weeks, we will complete a contemporary Goldberg machine. Each member of the class will build one component of the device. Each section will receive a signal and transmit that signal to the next section. In addition to building the project, each member of the class will be a part of one documentation committee: video, photography, design, DVD, web, and writing.

In reference to the origins of the word and the recent voting machine debacles, our Goldbergian device will be a voting machine. What are the many problems with voting machines and the American political system? How can our Goldbergian device refer to this context?

Notes:
1. Rube Goldberg, Rube Goldberg vs The Machine Age (New York: Hasting House, 1968), p. viii
2. Ibid. p. vii

This was honestly the most intense course I’ve taught at UCLA. It focused on process and learning new skills more than refined production, but the end result was impressive in many ways. I think more than anything else, it was a complex social process. I congratulate all of the participants: Kyle Audick, Jonathan Bobrow, Jono Brandel, Richard Caceres, Erik Carlson, Danni Chen, Chris Chernoff, Megan Daalder, Gleb Denisov, Patrick Gilliland, Mary Huang, Joe Liao, Fei Liu, Brian Miller, Ben Perkins, Michael Sun, Emerson Taymor, Patrick Tierney, and Steven Ziadie. And it would not have been possible without ace teaching assistant Michael Kontopoulos.

John Maeda is gave a lecture on 16 May 2008 in the MIT Media Lab’s Bartos Theater before he left MIT to become president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). His former students were invited to design a poster to announce the event. My poster (above) encodes the data about the time and place of the lecture into visual form. The forms are the sound waves created as I read the lecture information into a microphone. I designed the poster with typographic information superimposed on the waves, but I removed the type at the last moment. From top to bottom: 16 May 2008, 3:30 - 4:30pm, John Maeda, MIT Media Lab, Bartos Theater, Wiesner Building, E15, 20 Ames St, Cambridge.

Pixelache 2008 asked a few grassroots initiatives about their organizational strategies. They have documented survey answers Processing, Arduino, Dorkbot, and Boxwars UK on their site.

The questions were:
- What are the aims of the project you are involved in?
- How is the project organized?
- How do you support the work financially and what impact does this have on your project?
- What do you feel you have achieved, and what are the problems you face?
- Are there any past projects/models which have inspired you?
- What are your hopes for the future?

Ben Fry and I answered the questions about Processing.

The DMA Senior Exhibition opens this Thursday, 5 June and runs until graduation on Saturday, 14 June. I had the privilege to work with many of these students in more than one class over the last few years (28, 152A, 152B). They are an amazing group with extraordinary energy. They will truly be missed next year. Megan Daalder, Emerson Taymor, Ben Perkins, and Jonathan Bobrow are all showing work that was developed in my classes. Please visit the exhibition website.

On May 21st, I’ll be driving down to San Diego to talk about “software studies.” As defined by the organizers:

Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006), the Software Studies Workshop @ UCSD (21 - 22 May) is a foundational event bringing together key U.S. figures in this emerging area. The workshop will discuss what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. Our goal is for the workshop to result in publishing a founding statement on the field, as well as initiate a set of interdisciplinary project collaborations. The workshop is sponsored by Calit2, CRCA, HASTAC, UCDARNet, and the UCSD Visual Arts Department.

The Pecha Kucha on Wednesday afternoon is open to the public. Seating is limited and RSVP is required. For more information visit the website.

Participants include Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology), Geoff Bowker (Santa Clara University), Benjamin Bratton (UCLA), Matt Fuller (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Kate Hayles (UCLA), Matt Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland), Peter Lunenfeld (Art Center College of Design), Mark Marino (USC), Michael Mateas (UCSC), Nick Montfort (MIT), Rita Raley (UCSB), C.E.B. Reas (UCLA), Warren Sack (UCSC), Doug Sery (MIT Press), Chandler McWilliams (UCLA), Lev Manovich (UCSD), Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD), Jeremy Douglass (UCSD), Amy Alexander (UCSD), Barry Brown (UCSD), Jordan Crandall (UCSD), Kelly Gates (UCSD), Brian Goldfarb (UCSD), Jim Hollan (UCSD), Stefan Tanaka (UCSD), and Geoff Voelker (UCSD).

EXIT STRATEGIES features new artwork from the graduating MFA class of the UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts. Works span the genres of installation, painting, performance, sculpture, software, sound, and video. Artists include: Casey Alt, Estevan Carlos Benson, Zach Blas, Xárene Eskandar, Yunsil Heo, Jihyun Kim, Gil Kuno, Christopher O’Leary, Aaron Siegel, Jacob Tonski, and Pinar Yoldas.

I am the primary thesis adviser for Yunsil and a committee member for Jihyun, Gil, Aaron, and Pinar.

The opening event is 5:00-9:00 pm, Thursday, 15 May 2008, in the New Wight Gallery of UCLA’s Broad Art Center.

The Mission Statement reads:

Ours is the era of the exit strategy. Whether in military, commercial, or personal engagements, exit strategies inject planned obsolescence into every human action. Exit strategies collapse history into instrumentality: the ends justify not only the means but also the beginnings. They sacrifice openness, complexity, and sustainability to the gods of the closed, the simplistic, and the disposable. They are meager attempts to convince ourselves of the possibility for absolute control and computability in all areas of life.

We see the current cultural obsession with exit strategies as an opportunity. Our work destabilizes the concept of the exit strategy by recasting it as an ethics of escape, subversion, and nomadism. Our exit strategies are material mechanisms for prying open hermetic systems of power and representation. Our practices discover ways out. Our works plot paths for others to follow.

For more information, visit the website.

The Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria has curated the “Digital Senses” exhibition that runs from 18 April to 11 May at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kiev. My Tissue software is a part of the exhibition. The curatorial statement by Manuela Pfaffenberger and Gerfried Stocker is posted on the exhibition website.

When Tissue was shown at the Ars Electronica center in 2003 (see image above) the software used a unique interface called the Responsive Window. It was built by Joe Paradiso of the MIT Media Lab. The Responsive Window locates the position of taps and knocks on a glass surface. The Tissue software was projected onto the glass and responded to the input by changing its form and motion.

Process 5 is included in the “Holy Fire, Art in the Digital Age” exhibition in Brussels. The show, curated by Yves Bernard and Domenico Quaranta, runs from 18 to 30 April 2008 at the iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology. It is described as:

… a collective exhibition featuring a unique panel of digital artworks created in the last years by internationally known new media artists, and coming from galleries and collections from around the world (USA, Europe, Russia). Holy Fire is an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality and difficulties of maintenance, was able to enter the art market.

The organizers make a clear statement about their views of the current status of what is often referred to as media art:

The artworks in Holy Fire are not new media art, but simply art of our time: art which appropriates institutional or corporate identities, creates fictional ones, hacks softwares and game engines for its own purposes, infiltrates online or offline communities in order to portray them or their own myths, subverts existing tools or creates its own ones, explores the aesthetics of computation and information spaces; or, more simply, uses computer hardware and software in order to create art which talks about our world.

With the accelerated technological development (e.g. large flat screens, powerful beamers [projectors], ubiquitous computing, fast network) and the sociological and cultural acceptance of digital tools and media, new media art is becoming one of the main currents of 21th century art, looking at its own nexus to our techno-environment as a strength (not deafness), and is entering into our everyday life in our office, in public or corporate buildings as well as in our home

The exhibition includes work from Cory Arcangel (USA), Gazira Babeli (SL), Boredomresearch (UK), Christophe Bruno (FR), Gregory Chatonsky (FR), Miguel Chevalier (FR), Vuk Cosic (SLO), Shane Hope (USA), Jodi (BE/NL), Lab[au] (BE), Joan Leandre (SP), Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied (RU/DE), Golan Levin (USA), Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG (IT), Alison Mealey (UK), Mark Napier (USA), C.E.B. Reas (USA), Charles Sandison (UK/FI), Antoine Schmitt (FR), Yacine Sebti (BE), Alexei Shulgin & Aristarkh Chernyshev (RU), John F. Simon, Jr. (USA), Paul Slocum (USA), Wolfgang Staehle (USA), Eddo Stern (USA), Ubermorgen.com (AT), and Carlo Zanni (IT).

The NODE08 forum for digital arts takes place in Frankfurt from 5 -12 April 2008. I’m giving a lecture called “Form + Code” on Tuesday and teaching a workshop on making prints with Processing the next day. The lecture is about a new book that I’m currently preparing with Chandler McWilliams (more about that later). Check out the complete schedule for more information.