floss book - ixi software

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Expression and Time:
the question of strata and
time management in creative
practices using technology
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Thor Magnusson
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[1]
The precise timing
here is obviously
debatable: some
might say with the
Atari computer and
the invention of
MIDI but others
would argue that it
was when one could
perform real-time
manipulation of
audio and video in
high resolution.
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time
Creative product = --------------------------expressivity of environment
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http://www.signwave.co.uk
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[3]
http://makezine.com/04/
ownyourown/
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[4]
Here we should read
HCI as literally as
possible, i.e. not as
a field concerned
with how a button
should look or
function, but as a
field that should
study the more
philosophical
questions related to
what it means to be a
human that deals with
a symbolic machine
created by the human
itself implanted with
its creator’s
symbolic logic
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Amazingly little has
been written about
the way commercial
software companies
effectively run a
new type of Western
imperialism with
their way of
representing thought
and activities
through their
interaction and
interface design.
(but see Sardar,
2000)
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Bibliography
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Notes
This text draws on a survey polling artist-technologists exploring the
time/creativity question and interpret their answers into 13 traces of thinking
about tool use. We look at the question of strata in production environments and
the question of finding a platform where the focus is on the enabling of general
production (the time factor) with as minimum limitations as possible. Finally, we
discuss the status of open source artist-created software environments as metaart, i.e. expressive platforms that necessarily embody aesthetic ideas and
purpose.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Anonymous, Marije Baalman, Ross Bencina, Tom Betts, Andrew Brown,
Graham Coleman, Nick Collins, Alberto di Campo, John Eacott, Tom Hall, Enrike
Hurtado-Mendieta, Aymeric Mansoux, Click Nilson, Julian Rohrhuber, Andrew
Sorensen, Matthew Yee-King and Johannes M. Zmoelnig for their brilliant answers to
my simple question on time and expressivity in open source production
environments. The opinions in this article (outside of italic quotations) are my
own and I apologise if I have misrepresented the contribution of the respondents.