Hello and greetings from Aarhus, Denmark.
Note: Some images in this email come from participants in the workshop Open Source Tools for Artists
cover image by Nynne Lucca
I’m currently an artist-in-resident with Flux Factory at ARoS Art Museum, where we reside on the 3rd floor Atelier of the museum for their residency program ARoS Public. I’ve been here for a few weeks, and worked with local community partners Code & Share [] and art collective Cantina to organize a workshop.
In the workshop we talked about open source software and both office/productivity suites and experimental tools for art-making. During the workshop participants produced new works, discussed tools they currently used and tools they’d like to see come into existence. The fruits of the workshop have resulted in this digital zine:
=> Open Source Tools for Artists digital zine
The zine is open source itself, and can be forked, remixed, and edited.
=> Zine source
image by Sholeh Asgary
Governor’s Island
Next month I will be in another residency with Flux Factory as we sail, or actually take a ferry, to Governor’s Island in New York City. We’ll be in residence there until the end of October. You are invited to visit in-person or virtually. I’ll post more when we hold events in September. The Lenape people’s name for Governor’s Island was Paggank - “nut island.”
=> Governor’s Island on Wikipedia
Tilde communities
For a bit less than a year I’ve been part of a ~tilde community. So-called because members of these online communities have a tilde ~ affixed before their name. These communities are largely text-based crews of a few dozen or hundred people that share a single computer on the internet. We log in, have a message board, work on programming projects, host a blog, play games.
I joined Ctrl-C Club and have a programmer-y blog and have been making lots of little pieces of software. One tiny tool I made recently is my vwscratchpad.
This is a drawing of Donovan that I made during an online co-working session with Babycastles last month with my vwscratchpad
vwscratchpad is a tool I made for my own sketching needs. It works on my phone, tablet and laptop. It’s an ultra-minimal sketching tool. It has no eraser nor color-matching. If you make a mistake, like with watercolor, you must paint over it or work it in.
=> vwscratchpad on my website
=> vwscratchpad source code
Artists and Hackers
A few weeks ago we released the latest episode of Artists and Hackers, the podcast I host with past and present students from Purchase College.
The current episode features an interview with artist, anthropologist, designer and time traveller Ayo Okunseinde on the project he co-founded, the Iyapo Repository. Our next episode should come out within a week or so. By the way, I’m currently looking for funding opportunities to extend working with the great students I’ve been lucky to have work with me. I’m very open to any feedback or topic suggestions for the podcast.
=> Reclamation and Worldbuilding in the Iyapo Repository
=> All episodes of Artists and Hackers
image by Jesper Lyng
Now
I keep a list of current (and past) projects on my website now page. It includes software and art.
=> my NOW page
In 2 weeks I’ll be back to school again! This semester I’m teaching Programming for Visual Artists as well as Social Software. I’m entering my fourth year teaching at Purchase College.
Are you in Aarhus, Denmark? Send me a message if you’d like to meet up this week before I head back to New York. Or anywhere else in the world, I’d love to hear from you too :)
–Lee
August 15, 2021