Gericault, The Raft of Medusa, 1819

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Gericault, The Raft of Medusa, 1819
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Participatory ArtworksCreating an Artefact
through collaboration.

• Week 3

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Today

• Reflect on the nature of creative collaborations.
• Outline some major works which exist only as a
  result of collaboration.
• Understand the relationship between Flash and
  Stored data Input and Output.

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Exquisite Corpses

• Adopted by the Dada and Surrealist artists of the
  1920s-40s.
• Stems from Consequences game
• Random and Fixed.

by Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro and Max
Morise, 1928
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Collaboration as social activity

• Quilting Bees, USA, Mid 1800s to now.

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Participatory Art

• Participatory art refers to any art practice
  where the artist creates a process which is
  employed by a number of users to generate an
  artwork.
• Classed as Rachel Greene, as OPEN artwork, as
  its potentially always changeable, growing.

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Andy Deck, Glyphiti, 2001

• http//artcontext.net/glyphiti/docs/index.php
• How do you feel about
• the method of control
• the method of display
• contributing

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www.IconTown.de,1996

• Artists Generating Icons for exhibition in a
  public space

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Communimage,1999Omi Scheiderbauer, Teresa
Alonso, Luks Brunner, Malex Spiegel and Roger
Lüchinger

• http//www.communimage.ch
• Artists and the public share the same space
  democratic
• Uses everyday messages, a record, subversion
• Qualities whole is greater than sum of parts.

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Gridcosm, Ed Statsny, 1997

• http//www.sito.org/cgi-bin/gridcosm/gridcosm?leve
  l1004
• Seemingly infinite steam of imagery
• PIXELFEST, The Man in Blueshttp//www.themaninblu
  e.com/writing/perspective/2004/11/12/
• http//haub.net/pixelfest/

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Observations

• Art becomes polluted without an editor is
  that the point?
• Interesting rather than great art?
• Interactive to the third level (changing the
  system) but still within pre-defined rules.
• A shift in the role of the artist from artefact
  creator to tool creator.

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Ecotonoha, Yugo Nakamura, 2004

• https//www.ecotonoha.com/index_en.htmlCommunity
  site with ecological output
• Users Mark is recorded, stored and in turn
  encourages more participation

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Participatory Artworks

• Require definitions of rules.
• These rules declare the open-ness or
  closed-ness of the piece
• More open-ness less predicability? More
  creativity?
• Artist needs to set borders how do they handle
  scale?
• What can be contributed text, any graphic
  elements, sounds, videos, movements, time?

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A matter of time

• Jessica Helfand, Screen Essays on Graphic
  Design, New Media and Visual Culture
• For electronic experiences to resonate with
  equal meaning, it would seem imperative for such
  lapses to be duly recognised, if not celebrated
  altogether

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www.thebankoftime.com

• The last human activity to be commodified is
  inactivity itself
• Your idleness gives natural reward

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Beginning to build a system

• What is the significance of the piece?
• Can it be feasibly built in the time available?
• Understanding the technology

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Flash and Storage

• We can Store Text, Numbers
• Text could be a message, a filename?
• A Number could stand for anything position on
  stage, colour, quantity
• Flash can write and read to XML, text files or
  databases VIA coldfusion.

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Basic Model of Flash-to-XML file interaction.
XML file/Text file
Flash movie
reading data
CF page
writing data
writing data
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Hints for Development

• Break the system down into small chunks by
  structure diagram
• Solve chunks one at a time
• Get ColdFusion working without flash

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Flash Demonstration

• Creating a simple message system
• 1. Fetching names from an XML file into Flash.

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XML Data
ltguestgt ltnamegtCatherinelt/namegt ltmessagegthi
everyonelt/messagegt lt/guestgt ltguestgt ltnamegtLeonlt/n
amegt ltmessagegtMessage from rejuvenatelt/messagegt lt/
guestgt
child0
child0
child0
child1
child0
child1
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CF code for reading from an XML file

• my_xml new XML()
• my_xml.onLoad runloader1
• my_xml.load("config.xml")
• my_xml.ignoreWhite true
• function runloader1()
• mynamemy_xml.childNodes0.childNodes0
• .childNodes0.nodeValue
• trace(myname)
• This just puts a message in the trace window

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XML onto the stage

• function runloader1()
• numofguestsmy_xml.childNodes.length
• for (i0iltnumofguestsi)
• mynamemy_xml.childNodesi.childNodes0.childNo
  des0.nodeValue
• _root.createEmptyMovieClip("names"i,_root.getNex
  tHighestDepth())
• _root"names"i._xrandom(300)
• _root"names"i._yrandom(300)
• _root"names"i.createTextField("mname",_root.ge
  tNextHighestDepth(),0,0,200,100)
• _root"names"i.mname.textmyname

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ColdFusion - to add to the XML file

• ltcffile action "append" addNewLine "No" file
  "C\Domains\catherinestones.net\wwwroot\NMA\conf
  ig.xml" output "ltguestgtltnamegtyournamelt/namegtltm
  essagegtyourmessagelt/messagegtlt/guestgt"gt
• then you get flash to send its variables to this
  coldfusion file.

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FTP Details

• ftp host ftp.catherinestones.net
• ftp u/n student
• p/w student