Final Zine Project
April 23: Class feedback
Sofia wants to be able to learn something about the history of Generative AI from Zine.
Direct argument needs to tied in more. Needs to have words.
Something I loved about Vera Molnar and Manfred Mohr, is how both of them iterated over the square and cube. So what is my cube? Internet Culture? Look at internet culture, same as they did with the cube. Revisit what I wrote in Week 3
This!: There was a separation between Manfred Mohr and the computer. Same as there is with us and AI. RE pseudo-coding and writing down algorithms as a way to make that separation more intentional, less anxious.
Question: Actually I realize that having provenance tracing only with the goal of having less replications does not go with my ethos.
But what is in each local server? Record?
Is there any system today that stores the actual algorithm / source material? Because all of them store record of transaction happening. How many network hops until this happens?
Perhaps my questions will only be solved the day I open my own serber.
Thesis Resources through Blockchain
The artist wants to come together and one day and watch the video together âď¸
The idea is that weâre gonna have pixels that are lost. Maybe
On Art Blocks, if the code is invoked, the act of me saying I wanna buy this, changes the algorithm. And that would be a browser API based variable.
Questio n: But does it change the algorithm for other people? And is it fair to say it changes the algorithm? Wasnât this variance input by the creator? Therefore part of the OG algo, even if the output differs?
Logic system #1:
- We know that making art is therapeutic. [Â Add reference expert. ]
- In the age of the internet, the source material closest to us is data strutuctures. File systems. They rule our life. We depend on them, and they depend on us to feed them in turn.
1.1 Is making for software already linked to mental benefits / creativity through ownership?
And of course I didnât know this when I first started working on this a year ago, but RAM prices + flash memory storage prices increased massively through AI since December perhaps. [ check ]
Logic system #2:
- entry point: amount of data humans produce. Graph!
- My personal case: there was a sense that everything matters and that I might need something in the future. It might be because I moved countries 7/8 times already, and therefore started developing archives and ways to see information from back home. Eg. I would take a photo of my room at my parentâs house before leaving for 6months (developing versioning for this would be fun in a separate project.).
If access to information is whatâs most important for me (Public Policy background), this produces a contradiction. Scale, size, repetition and backups, data management based on time, workspace, type?
Stance
Having your favorite internet artifact being mentioned more times on the Internet Archive is a good thing. It signifies strength of connection.
How many times is our media being duplicated in different servers across the world?
Stance should be around repetition and replication. Copies vs Original. How much can we modify an image (where the variable is Internet Archive mentions / repetition across servers) until the person would no longer rather hold access the original versus the algorithmically modified copy?
The image itself would be (not have!) a stamp of how loved it is.
I say access (as in on a physical interface) because the image will not be deleted. Although it could if it had access to external server,
How many times does something get duplicated before you can't trace it back anymore?
Inspiration is Michael Noll, who manipulated a program to look like Mondrianâs work.
Michael Noll went around asking people which one was made with computer and by Mondrian. He ran basically an AB taste test.
59% preferred the Mondrian. Only 29% could correctly identify which one it was. So even people who thought they knew what they were looking at, didn't. The origin of the image stopped being legible.
Algorithm
- Input: image of users choice. Prompt: favorite internet artifacts.
- Image Processing:
- Crop square taking center point, accounting for aspect ratio. [ See algorithm developed for Machine Learning Hurricane Data training project ]
- Subdivided into 25 parts.
- Select most present color and assign to variable.
- Output: 1:1 image with 5 by 5 squares with most present color in each section.
- Internet Archive API Processing:
- Run this image through Internet Archive API. Consider other APIs that answer the question - How many times is our media being duplicated in different servers across the world?.
- [ Check if I need Google Image search ] or if API has this already plugged in.
- Depending on how many times that image has been shared/mentioned on Internet Archive, the output image colors will blend in more erradic ways.
- Processing Rules
- Need to test one to see. Testing with just image processing algorithm is enough.
Interesting if I would make it a modular library / component based codebase.
Physical Artifact
Might be the NeoPixel BFF light in a dedicated device or vanilla HTML/CSS website.
for the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32 s3 and with the SD card on the Seeed Studio round screen loaded with 12 images.
Beeple
2024 in an NFC Summit create one of his dailies and the process was very interesting. He has libraries of different elements, did some AI processing for colors and rendering and took 30 to 40 mins;;
Can share more - have notes.
Class Notes April 23
If Instagram decides to shut down, your content is gone.
Blockchain and smart contracts essentially only need self executable code.
But when itâs distributed if one of the nodes gets shut down, the information still lives.
I would have liked to make my Endangered Information Nodes system work like this. Distributed storage, with repetition checks. Separation between personal life content photos and photos that are universally seen. Although each photo âuniversally seenâ was
But with UI open source and exposed for the users. Sharing: given that transmission is done via radio, it becomes tricky to do with PDFs. However through smallfile.ca/make thereâs probably other options. But perhaps thereâs something Iâm missing in LoRA and reticulum. A good question would be how far do my nodes need to be from each other to transmit an image?
7x7 conference hosted by Rhizome.
Pair artists with luminaires to create something, they developed the first monograph and primitive NFT.
Blockchain / bitcoin better for money. NFTs are
ERC 721 Token Standard, thatâs what the NFT is.
Ethereum had proof of work - not sustainble. Very energy intensive bc it mints.
2023, when Ethereum moved to proof of steak.
Home of finance and gaming, so still holds a lot of weight.
There was another blockchain coded.
Within Smart Contracts, royalties are a given. The second, money is received is
Even on secondary sale, royalties are automatically distributed to artist and proper parties the second money is received.
Hic et Nuc // Tezos:
Tezos isnât a blockchain that does much
Tezos is a good place to start minting for 20$.
Everyone has their own nodes that they run locally.
No centralized server. Core argument for blockchain.
RWeave.
Filecoin if they wanna store external assets.
IFS - somewhat of a decentralized server Interplenatery. file system network.
No single point of failure in that server.
Itâs a public ledger.
All the banks use blockchain. Qorum, a side chain of Ethereum, thatâs private.
People been experimenting with Bitcoin as a venue to NFTs. They refer to them as inscriptions. Coin as a canvas. Inscribing on a bitcoin, record of an artwork. They call them ordinals, produced by a method called Inscription.
We can see the metadata - weâre throwing this into that bucket.
We can take a look at the smart contract through Etherscan. But you can track everything on there. So argument of malicious actors doesnât hold up.
There used to be Twister, to scramble sources.
10 years ago, people who were algoriths just settled on calling it creative coding.
Bitcoin Inscriptions doesnât allow for royalties and smart contracts.
Bitcoin is just supposed to be a store of value. Not coin as a canvas.
Freedom. We now have a valid ecosystem for code artists to make a living.
Questions
- Is there a way to access her book? Available on NYU library / as part of syllabus? Would like to reference it or see it in the coming days, delivery takes too long for my timelines.
- What about Quantum (2014) is distributed? Is it each line of code? Is it bits of the image.
Image is going to a completely different server.
Code lives within a record of creation. Code is live in the browser. (Itâs a website?)
Viewed and acquired as code.
Question: did maths + shaders / processing libraries to render graphics in a lighter way enable this? Which part comes from the chain precisely?
Mint artwork = comes from the idea from minting money. Itâs the record of the artwork that is shared across nodes, not the art work itself.
Q: in this example, when you delete the file - the record stays but the algortihm to be executed to see the work, is still gone?
Ringers by Dimitry Traniak?
Platforms
Sofia found that people were not necessarily interested in keeping the physical copy which cuts costs and is an entirely different business model.
SuperRare - decision not to price them led to double the value.
Physical manifestations of his creations. He would render in one tiny little computer. Then 3D print a mold, cast in it, make the sculpture and blend it tgether with the dedicated computer, effectively destroying it.
Production notes
12 pages. Pick a project, take a position,
Algorithm is how that information is being conveyed.
- Define constraints (ideally more than 1).
- Writing a book and not using the letter E.
- Document the algorithm
- Can make it web based
- Criteria includes composition.
EG. essay on a piece of paper; looking at composition.
Stances / brainstorm
Do we perceive that there is a large amount of art depicting the cultural tensions we experience today in social media, or very little? Is the unit of the post the art itself and therefore
Do pop culture phenomena require art In a world
Where does authorship live when XYZ?
Aesthetic Research on a Computer
Is AI a collaborator? ââ although I donât actually wanna make it about AI.
Could be around text formatting and rules for pagination or sending content from A to B. form, content, sequence, layout, or language - portfolio based?
Self imposed constraints
- Would like to practice no frameworks coding.
Design elements
- Tiles?
- Creating 12 stamps for leather working in Tile shapes? !!! Parametric 3D modelling? Too functional?
Final Zine Project
Makes a historical argument about generative art and is itself structured by a self-defined generative system. The zine must have at least 12 independent pages. It can be physical (printed, hand-made, or any combination) or digital (a website or app with 12 distinct pages or views). The format is open â editorial text, diagrams, images, visualizations, code, annotation, or any combination â as long as the argument is legible to a reader who does not already know the field.
The argument must be clear. Pick a theme, a figure, a period, a tension, or a structural shift from the history we have covered. Make a claim and sustain it across the full publication.
The generative system must be documented.
Deliverables
- Your system statement
- 100â200 words describing your argument
- Somewhere in the zine â as a colophon, an appendix, a methodology note, or embedded in the design itself â you must describe your system: what it is, how it works, and what it produces. One paragraph minimum. The system should feel necessary to the work, not decorative.
- how the system enacts it
Review: Does the system feel necessary, or decorative? Is the argument legible to someone outside the field?
What counts as a generative system
Anything you define as a rule set that drives form, content, sequence, layout, or language â and that you apply consistently.
- A constraint on what words you use.
- A grid logic that determines page composition.
- An instruction set that generates image choices.
- A decision tree that routes the reader.
- A typographic rule tied to a historical variable.
The test is:Â could someone else apply your system and produce something recognizably in the same family as your zine?
www.blairs.computer - gives you a screenshot off her computer.
Algorithm
According to Sofiaâs NFT Taschen chapter, Sol LeWitt could be a generative artist his conceptual work is realized by ceding control to another craftsman via instructional systems.
Last class notes
Book: A Computer in the Art Room: The Origins of British Computer Arts 1950-80