Hello! It’s been a long time since I’ve written, and I think this is only email ‘newsletter’ #3. Life happens. This email includes both life and ‘work’ and links.
Year of Mourning
I received an unexpected call in late March from my friend Alaska. I was expecting a phone call from her; we were talking about once a week or so at that point, usually Thursday or Friday late at night. But this time she was not on the other end of the line. I didn’t recognize the voice. A man’s voice. Something was wrong. I found out she was unconscious in the hospital. Alaska is/was my age, and I anticipated growing old with her. She had been recently overcoming life challenges. I had no plan for her passing away. It wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m still unsure how to fully process it. In the days leading up to her death her ex-husband, current boyfriend and a past boyfriend all were allowed to visit her in the hospital. They came together, played her favorite music, talked to her, held their hands together and held hers as she passed away. I am thankful they were there with her. I considered Alaska like a family member. And I know she felt that way about me. I received a number of items from Alaska mailed to me recently, but I’ve been unable to open the box. It sits in my apartment waiting for me. It’s hard to accept I can’t just call her on the phone or go visit her.
aphantasia
I’ve always struggled with recall and ‘picturing’. So it was enlightening to learn about aphantasia. To be clear, I’ve not been diagnosed. I know that my sound recall is incredible but I can’t picture things in my mind visually. I think this is what originally drove me to make a model of my childhood house.
Professing
I’m beginning my fourth year at Purchase College where I’m Assistant Professor of New Media and Computer Science. I still love it. After a year and a bit of teaching online I’ve been requested to teach in-person in the fall. I don’t love that it will add back 6+ hours commuting a week, but I do really like the school, and will gladly go teach. I will be teaching “Social Software” and “Programming For Visual Artists,” my bread and butter, and advising senior thesis students. I feel very aligned with the school’s mission, my departments and with the students. I feel lucky to be there.
Commission for MIT: Generative Unfoldings
I received a commission from MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology. The exhibit Generative Unfoldings opened online in April. My work for the show is titled Self-Doubting System.
Interactive Storytelling For the Screen
I wrote a chapter on the DIY autobiographical / storytelling videogame phenomenon called Flatgames for the new anthology Storytelling For the Screen from Routledge, edited by Sylke Rene-Meyer. If you want to read it but can’t access it otherwise, please message me.
Artists and Hackers podcast
We’ve put out 5 episodes, and our 6th comes out next week. For those even remotely interested in art, code and activism. Listen on our site, Apple, Spotify, etc.
Babycastles Academy
Babycastles is a DIY arts collective revolving around experimental games and supporting a community. I’ve organized 30+ online workshops for free or donation since the start of the pandemic. I’m very proud of this. We’ve developed a regular community of learners and an online alternative education system. We wrote a grant and are receiving regular annual funding from the NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs. We also have members and accept donations. Thank you. In the fall I worked with our supporter Maxwell Neely-Cohen and several Babycastles volunteers (Hyacinth, Flan, Lauren) to re-launch the Babycastles residency program. We’re on our second cohort this summer, and I’ve been working with some of the artists to write grants for their projects.
Generative music
I’m still making a lot of music, generative ambient tracks on my modular synth. Check out my recent album New Silences on Bandcamp. Do you use Bandcamp? Here’s some free codes to get it and add to your collection. It’s one code per person so randomly try em below or email me for your own private code.
hr9m-xrma 4x27-jskb qcmv-ydtx fsb8-7hrq w4x2-5jcz eec5-7ysg 87hb-vuh3 tlcl-ypms 2pjh-7fyd vucu-xld7 6mpd-jaw5 ur9s-kbcr mv2c-gx4d fgme-3vec
Oh, and I tried making an industrial techno-ish piece too. That’s here.
Taper Mag #6
A Throw of the Text is in the current edition of Taper, the online literary magazine for small computational pieces, published by Bad Quarto. “Each of the poems in Taper #6 is licensed as free software for you to use, study, modify, and share however you like.”
This piece takes as inspiration artist Marcel Broodthaers’ “Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard,” a re-interpretation of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem rendering the work’s original text as structural graphic elements. This program builds upon this formula by arranging Unicode text characters as structural graphic elements, ignoring typical linear arrangements of text in a line. We have moved from Broodthaers’ original static book page presentation to the form of a web browser as canvas building up and shifting over time. Last year mathematician John Conway (of Game of Life fame) passed and there is a visual tribute here to the power of emergence through arrangement of primitive elements, though currently without interactivity between lifeform elements. For an alternate view of the structure as a whole the viewer is invited to “select all text” at any time to create a new visual form of the work.
Upcoming
I am working on an oral history project, zine-making software and digital photo archive for Space 1026 in Philadelphia. It was generously supported by NEW INC through a grant and partnership with Knight Foundation and the Museum Computer Network. Much more info to come when we’re ready to release.
Community and Code
In two weeks I am heading to Berlin to visit my friend Grayson Earle, and then to Aarhus Denmark to visit Art & Code [] and do a residency with Flux Factory at ARoS museum! I’m nervous to travel but excited to see friends and get the hell out of New York City.
I am not super active on Instagram, Twitter Facebook. I have been part of an artsy-hacky ‘solar punk’ collective on Mastodon and programmer-nerds on the Ctrl-C.club tilde (a shared computer system). Both of these systems are semi-private/semi-public so you may not be able to see anything if you visit those links. I’m thankful for the new friends I’ve met there. I’ve also been working on lots of software including sketching software, games, blog-writing software, and contributed a theme (“Slimey”) to the Gemini protocol client Amfora. If you are excited about building an alternative, minimal, lo-fi alternative to the internet, you may enjoy checking out Gemini. I started a gemini capsule in November and I have 18,000 readers there. I only know this because I see how many hits I get to that URL. I don’t have any tracking on my regular website, which is also due for a revamp when I get to it.
Links to works I’ve made recently
I still do a ton of code sketching.
I wrote a toy LOGO programming engine of sorts for the spring class I taught Drawing, Moving and Seeing With Code. It’s a retro LOGO language emulator that I coded with p5.js. Try generating a ‘forest’ here. And this one generates a minimal visual artwork with the code editor embedded.
63 Games I’d Like to Play and/or Make
Gobi, an oldskool resource managemet game, like a simplified The Oregon Trail. I made it from memory based on a game my sister and I enjoyed in the late 90s on a 100-games-on-1 shareware disc.
Some sci fi worldbuilding via Google forms: 1 2 3 I have a hidden now page on my website anytime you wanna see what I’m up to.
Scene Report
Talked to Party Steve a few times on the phone. We talked about Evil Land Mafia, housing, hearts, community. Jen is raising chickens at Emerald Street and installed a backyard soaking tub and is finishing up a quilt. Syn is playing some damn good noise shows every Friday night on Twitch. Xin rented a vanlife and spent weeks roaming the PNW, including getting lost in a forest and had to call a tow truck. Dave’s neighbors opened a restaurant on his front porch without checking with him. Matt and Yoyo had a dual gallery / studio sich deep in the desert but word is that they’re gonna head back to LA with the Tuxedo Boys. Kate moved to West Philly with her kayaks. Tzu Huan’s making a movie deep in the woods of the catskills (i’m on the crew). Jemila has scored the illustrious 3rd (?) residency on Governor’s Island, incredible. The Mushroom Gods are back. Father Tus swims everyday. He’s head of the pool committee at the condo. Jerome and I have eaten duck or brisket sandwiches every weekend for the past month.
I still bike everyday. Have been climbing at the outdoor climbing gym underneath Manhattan bridge, and skateboarding around. It’s fun. Lately I’ve been sketching and playing blues piano.
In cahoots, Lee