James George and Jonathan Minard co-directed an interactive documentary on the people in my scene. I was happy to be one of the interviewees and be one of the commissioned code artists. Here was the beta teaser on kickstarter:
I was responsible for implementing two of the open source visual systems: BallDroppings and Neurons. Being a part of this project was a very high honor for me and I only regret not being more available to involve myself during its production.
More info about CLOUDS on Creative Applications
and a good interview with them.
I'm posting this long overdue portfolio entry in celebration of CLOUD's screening at MoMa. In the tradition of these portfolio entries which share a small bit of the process, and indulging in the open-ness of the project, I'll describe my experience contributing.
We met up at a medium sized hackerspace in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco which was associated with the oooShiny tribe. James, John, and a few others had already set up shop there when I arrived from Silicon Valley. A thin layer of ephemeral user network cables blanketed over the tables and floors, crawling at times like vines up the walls. USB, power, video, hot swapping in realtime to the crowd's murmur. It was a lot of macbooks, tripods, and hoodies. Exploratorium toys strewn about the space as they endearingly are year round. A dusty, cracked Processing textbook lay wedged between a copy of Curtis Roads' Microsound and a half-consumed makerbot filament case. I brought my cat Hexadecimal and let him poke around in all the boxes of miscellanea. People were walking around taking care of fifty different things. The space was teeming with life. The faint smell of smoke and curry wafting in through the victorian windows.
I joined in at the table with matching laptop and hoodie. James got me up to speed with getting all the git submodules. The platform was already organized and ready to go, all I had to do was subclass someone's handy superclass and fill it with my artwork. It wasn't just that ofxUI was already installed – Reza was in the house. The project was very deeply OF. I was also pleased to meet Patricio Gonzalez Vivo for the first time. Gmunk paid us a visit. I believe Grey Area Foundation was resident down the hall in the same space at the time. I think the whole project is a miracle.
