hack artikl by colleague in ap, martin howse 4 linuxuser + developer magazine:
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**title
Stay Free
**strapline
Artists working with sound and video are rapidly deserting limited,
proprietary software, to create their own free software apps and
art. In the first of a three part article, Martin Howse explores this
growing, international community of artist-developers.
**body
Few would deny that artists have always been attracted to the free,
the unencumbered, preferring DIY or collective solutions over
proprietary lock-down and control of any kind. Yet, until recently
electronic musicians and visual artists, VJs and net artists have
favoured the modernist aesthetics of the Powerbook with accompanying
Mac OS X desktop, above more political or economic concerns. However,
it didn't take long before radical computer artists were champing at
the bit, given the limitations of a proprietary OS and apps. And in
recent years, pioneer artist-developers such as Jaromil or Alex McLean
have started to push the coding envelope, exploring new, open
solutions and forming passionate collectives and communities based
around the free software model. It was easy to see that proprietary
solutions were going nowhere when faced with the most demanding of
users, the artist. In common with hackers, artists are notoriously
impatient creatures, unable to wait months for commercial companies
to implement bugfixes, tweaks, or essential customisations which
define an artist's sound or feel. Community development models or
self-coded extensions, which at the very least demand open source code
and co-operative developers, are an obvious solution which sees
artists and developers working together, either within collectives or
themselves forming that strange hybrid, the artist-developer.
Through examining a range of open sound and video apps, such
as Pd (Pure Data, a superbly extendible visual scripting app) and
groups of free software artists and developers, it becomes obvious
that the formation of cohesive social networks based around an open
development model, and with sets of common interests, is an attractive
proposition. And it's obvious that such networks grow exponentially,
snowballing as new users adhere to a solid knowledge base of artistic
solutions. After all, these days, who wants to attend expensive
proprietary workshops exploring closed apps, when they can themselves
benefit from and contribute to free artistic software through lively,
helpful communities in a symbiotic relation.
**Speculative code
Artists are fickle. Ideas may take time to materialise and in the
meantime the artist is left grasping at straws, perhaps taking wrong
turnings, meandering through speculative avenues. This is all part of
an essential process, but given the seemingly deterministic nature of
computer science, coding truly artistic apps may seem doomed to
failure. One solution lies within higher level, interpreted or
embedded languages which present a higher degree of
abstraction. Although languages such as Perl and Lisp are not strictly
interpreted these days, they do offer a good degree of flexibility
which makes speculative RAD (Rapid Application Development) a serious
option. Indeed, slub (Alex McLean and Adrian Ward, both
artist-developers), have gone so far as to re-code small Perl sound
apps straight from the command-line during live
performances. According to Paul Graham (author of Hackers and Painters),
both Python and Lisp allow for top-down and
bottom-up approaches to coding, meaning that new expressive languages
can easily be coded on top of the base interpreter. Custom embedded
languages are another neat solution, and nearly all major open
artistic apps do at least allow for this option. And the two main
old-school sound apps, Csound and Common Lisp Music, rely totally on
this model. A more ambitious approach is that taken by Pd; the
creation of a complete environment which allows for exploration,
experimentation and which can easily be used to prototype apps or
create standalone tools. SuperCollider is similar in some respects,
but is focused totally on audio work and presents more of a
language-based interface. It's based heavily on Smalltalk, and is,
unfortunately, only free software in part.
Interoperability represents the flip-side of the extensibility
coin. Artists such as slub have eagerly followed the classic Unix
design principles, connecting small, specialised sound and art apps
with a range of pipes and other common command-line tools to create
danceable, rhythmically fascinating sound works. And contemporary
computer art guru and theorist, Florian Cramer, has frequently, and
with much elegance, examined the links between the Unix commandline
and digital art practice. But, it's the hardcore developers of apps
such as FreeJ, LiVES, PDP and PiDiP (an extension to Pd) who have
really had to get down and dirty with interoperability issues. For one
week in November 2003, and subsequently on a particularly active
mailing list, international free software video and audio app
developers and artists hammered out piping, interoperability and
standards-based issues fermented during the Piksel worklab, held at
the Norwegian nerve centre of digital arts, Bek.
**Flash in the pan
Whereas previous generations of computer artists were happy enough
staying within the limits of then new proprietary packages and
environments authored by faceless corporations such as Macromedia, the
new breed of artist-developer feels more at home with the boundless
field of possibilities opened up by languages such as Python, C or
Lisp. The once ubiquitous Powerbook has now being replaced by low cost
PCs running GNU/Linux, and it's easy to see why. A plethora of
unencumbered tools is readily available, to use, adapt or learn from,
produced under a development model which favours flexibility, and
extensibility. Groundbreaking visual or audio work simply cannot be
produced under a proprietary approach.
Though generic, more tool-based apps such as MusE, Rosegarden,
or Cinelerra are important within the artistic scene, this series is
more about artists and developers exploring the expressive
possibilities of both code and executable, aware of the cultural,
political and economic implications of free software. It becomes
difficult to separate groups or artists from their hacked
apps. Software could be viewed as their instrument, but there's more
than meets the eye here. Code is not simply a tool but rather defines
an absolute artistic identity. Software is the artwork both as written
code and as app which can be used freely in performances, workshops
and within the creation of new works by others.
**Keeping it pure
Though it's unlikely that audio apps such as Audacity or Sweep will in
themselves woo less politically inclined artists from their beloved
proprietary OS X apps, Pd and associated packages such as PDP and
PiDiP really do present an free artistic platform which has already
encouraged a good many artists to either migrate piecemeal to a free
OS or run with the open Darwin. Pd is the grandfather of all free
artistic apps, boasting one of the most active user and developer
communities and truly wearing its open source heart on its sleeve. Pd
sports an excellent pedigree, with roots stretching back to work at
IRCAM labs (l'Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Musique/Acoustique) in Paris founded by composer and conductor Pierre
Boulez. Miller Puckette, author of the seminal Max environment for
real-time audio development, commenced coding Pd a good few years
ago. Although it's possible to view Pd as a Max (now Max/MSP, a costly
proprietary product) clone, this was not the intention. Pd simply
follows a similar visual model for coding elaborate audio, and, with
extensions such as GEM, visual apps. Under Pd, patches are created by
joining any number of varying types of box which represent different
major functionalities. These include object boxes, messages, GUI boxes
such as sliders and self-evident comment boxes. Objects are easily
created by typing text into the object box under edit mode. Examples
of such objects could include an incoming note from a MIDI controller,
a control structure, an arithmetical operator or various audio signal
generators. As we'll see in the second article, Pd presents both a
supremely elegant and easy to visualise message passing model for live
media manipulation, at the same time as offering, through sub-patching
and extension, a complexity and level of abstraction which make it
suitable for almost all artistic audiovisual work. In its raw state,
Pd is perhaps simpler than Max/MSP and does present a less graphical
interface, but the beauty of Pd lies in its true extendibility, a
natural consequence of its open source nature. It would be impossible
to completely list the functional extensions, or so called externals,
which artists and developers have contributed to the Pd scene in
recent years. These range from adding esoteric neural network
functionality to creating usable Max-style GUI features and even
forcing poor Pd to inter-operate with our beloved Macromedia
Flash. With extensions and advanced network and piping capabilities,
Pd can be persuaded to play with almost anything, which makes of it an
ideal, flexible front end for any sort of multimedia chicanery. It's
the perfect artist's toy and quite simply irresistible.
**The art of falling apart
Though there are a good few externals which can prove useful for both
audio and video work, the GEM, PDP and associated PiDiP packages do
represent the big three which no free software artist should be
without. Though GEM and PDP/PiDiP are all about adding visual
abstractions to Pd's powerful core, both take radically different
approaches to the problem. GEM is a much older package, coded by Mark
Danks soon after Pd first hit the streets. It's age does show through,
and though one can do some wonderful things with GEM, as evidenced by
the work of artist Erich Berger, it is a quite limited external which
focuses mainly on geometric work with OpenGL. PDP (Pure Data Packet),
from artist-programmer Tom Schouten, is a much more exciting
proposition. Tom believes that the beauty of Pd lies in the
possibilities of connecting everything to everything else; code to all
media types to whatever else you can dream of. PDP pushes this idea to
the limit, and although the packet oriented approach currently does
seem to focus on images and video frames, there is support for OpenGL
rendering a la GEM, and some matrix operations are possible. The
Scheme interpreter, Guile, can also be easily plugged into PDP,
opening up a whole new field of possibilities. Development of PDP does
seem to be continuing at a breakneck space, as evidenced by recent
postings on both pd-dev and piksel lists.
And if you could ever tire of this kaleidoscope of fascinating
externals, PiDiP (an effortlessly recursive acronym of PiDiP Is
Definitely In Pieces), throws in edge detection routines, motion
tracking, streaming routines and a superb roster of image processing
effects. Quality ascii rendering can also be found in the mix, and its
worth noting that nearly all free software artists, including Jaromil
with his superb Hasciicam app, have flirted with ascii, a suitable
marker for a low-tech DIY aesthetic. Coded by the affable Yves
Degoyan, PiDiP is also developed at astounding speed, with new
features such as morphology operators added in recent weeks. A number
of artist and activist collectives, including Riereta in Barcelona,
have produced complex, functional video mixing apps using PiDiP
components.
Pd and associated externals are used by just about everyone
within the free artistic community. Even if artists prefer to work
within other apps, or use more abstract non-visual languages, Pd makes
for an excellent prototyping tool, enabling visual or sound artists to
rapidly manipulate and test complex ideas and new methodologies. Pd
and GEM feature heavily within the AGNULA (A GNU/Linux Audio
Distribution) project, which, given perhaps an image makeover, could
easily be viewed as the default distro for artists. AGNULA packs
almost every usable free software multimedia app into two distros:
DeMuDi, which is Debian based, and the Red Hat based RehMuDi. The
project kicked off only recently, and, with support from the European
Community, has hired the excellent Dave Philips to produce quality
documentation for the distro. This all sounds good, but few artists do
seem to be using the package as yet.
**Towards an artistic OS
At the other end of the spectrum when it comes down to usability, the
ap collective (Martin Howse and Jonathan Kemp) present an extreme
audiovisual lab, promoting new ways of thinking about
code. Performances are intense, brutal and supremely loud, making use
of custom virtual machine software clustered across junk PCs and
outputting audiovisual data through custom hardware modules. These
include computer-controlled record decks and laser projection
devices. Ap are hardcore, setting a radical agenda which includes the
creation of a free, dysfunctional, artistic OS. Ap work purposefully
against the secure OS model stressed throughout the industry,
preferring instead an open promiscuity of mobile code nodes which can
run on top of a virtual layer on any machine. Their latest performance
app, gdapp, argues for a total flattening of all forms of data and
code; audio, visual and code data are treated identically within a
self-configuring nodal space. The only user interface presented is a
complex configuration text file which can be edited by Vi or GNU Emacs
live to change the node space and establish new linkages.
**Free the VJ
Back in the day, before many of today's artists had even heard of free
software, a few lone pioneers hammered out a code base which is still
in use today, particularly when it comes down to high speed, open
source, video processing software. And as with any tight knit
community, free software artist developers are quick to acknowledge
their roots. Andreas Schiffler, author of SDL_gfx, a library of super
fast filtering, convolution and drawing tools, is one name which
always seems to crop up, with both Kentaro Fukuchi and Jaromil
acknowledging his influence on the EffecTV and FreeJ apps
respectively. And indeed, both of these coders have in turn inspired a
second generation of artist-developers with ap making some use of this
rich code-base. Within a rich community of activists, hackers and
artists, such is the nature of a free software development model which
will surely inspire new coders. Already, youthful coder, Niels Elburg,
is turning heads with his superbly rich VeeJay live video manipulation
and editing app which boasts over 84 effects, frame blending, editing
and recording on the fly. And as custom embedded, interpreted
languages push beyond simple algorithmic models, we can look forward
to truly flexible artistic apps. Applications which are truly aware of
both a formalist approach to coding, as evidenced by Paul Graham's
essays on the aesthetics of code, and a more political, cultural
agenda, perhaps best typified by the work of Graham Harwood and
0100101110101101.org.
**keylinks:
Pd: http://pure-data.iem.at
GEM: http://gem.iem.at
PDP: http://zwizwa.fartit.com/pd/pdp/overview.html
PiDiP: http://ydegoyon.free.fr/pidip.html
slub: www.slub.org
SuperCollider: www.audiosynth.com
Piksel: www.piksel.no
Jaromil: www.rastasoft.org
Erich Berger: http://randomseed.org
AGNULA: www.agnula.org
ap: www.1010.co.uk
SDL_gfx: www.ferzkopp.net/~aschiffler/Software/SDL_gfx-2.0
EffecTV: http://effectv.sourceforge.net
Veejay: http://veejay.sourceforge.net
Graham Harwood: www.mongrelx.org
ap are organising a symposium/event for early january 2005 in london
see:
http://fm01.druh.co.uk/symposium
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