Hello everyone, here's my irregular update of things I'm interested in and working on. These are occasional emails I send of my various projects.
I try to maintain an always-up-to-date text page with my current projects here: now.
I'm always interested in potential collaborations, friends, feedback and opportunities.
I'm emailing you from Aarhus, Denmark. I've been here for the past 3 weeks with Flux Factory, and this is my 3rd time in the city - we've done a residency at ARoS Art Museum (Northern Europe's largest museum!) for several summers now. They keep having us back! We love being here because we are working in a large, beautiful and contemporary art museum, we're located about 2 blocks away from our hotel and from a huge community-created area called Institute for (X), an experimental social space, public park, hostel, restaurants, bike repair, club, community garden, ceramics studio, and dozens of other independent organizations, groups and businesses. The history of these kinds of social spaces, which grow and exist in a continuum with squatter communities and communes, are deeply inspiring to us, and it's interesting to see slowly over the years how it relates to the rest of the city, and how it also contributes to and experiences gentrification as well.
I also love biking everywhere, the forests and parks, the cheap affordable salads and fish, and going to the gorgeous beaches along the bike paths. This time I'm appreciating more and more how Danes spend their evenings hanging out together, sitting by the canal, in public parks, outdoors at bars. This is not a pressure-cooker work-through-lunch/work-through-the-evening place, and there's a lot I feel I could learn from.
Recent Projects
Almost every day I work on my projects in a 'code-sketching' kind of way. Like a painter in their studio, I work on these sequentially, trying new things, iterating on past projects, or striking into new territory. Most often these are web-based artworks, but also archives, tools, zines, games or other experiments. Some of these grow into larger projects and others stay as small sketches.
Here's some but not all of my recent projects:
👩💻 Web World and Cooperative Computing
I led a workshop with Anders Visti of Code&Share, Aarhus. Our first workshop was Web World and Cooperative Computing, which covered the basics of HTML and CSS.
an introduction for artists and creative practitioners and those new to building websites, or a radical re-introduction to those with previous experience. The workshop will begin with an examination of the web’s history, including early browsers and net.art to contemporary approaches to web design and creating online space. The workshop will start with the basics of creating a website with HTML and CSS, and work with participants to construct their own online homes. Along the way we’ll cover semantic HTML, brutalist design, hosting, resilient and simple approaches to creating long-lasting spaces, and new protocols and online communities exploring web minimalism, permacomputing and the ‘slow web’ movement.
Our second event had some instruction and then a freewrite session, called Freewrite: Web Jam Session, inspired by the freewrite organized by HTML Energy that I attended in June.
Radio Free Aarhus
Radio Free Aarhus is an experimental audio zine created in Aarhus in the past few weeks. All recordings were captured on an Olympus Pearlcorder L150 Microcassette Recorder purchased at a swap meet in Berlin in July 2022. In one of its initial test recordings, composer/instrument builder Daniel Fishkin aimed to demonstrate how one could create a vibrato effect just by shaking a microcassette recorder, instantly permanently altering the playback speed of the recording device.
Recordings were made at locations including ARoS museum, on the lawn before Book1 hostel late at night, at Institute for (X), at an apartment dinner party, and at a Turkish restaurant in Gallerup. Our approach to recording is one of eager sampling and experimentation, allowing spaces to create sound and for sound to create space. This space is a manifestation of Flux Factory in its own time and space.
Here the fragments and juxtapositions become part of the texture pallete. This is far from a perfect digital recording. The tiny handheld recorder can be played like an instrument itself, and it imposes its own speed, distortions, fuzzes, glitches.
Narrascope talk on Fantasy Filing Systems
Link to talk (YouTube)
Link to slides
I spoke in July at the conference Narrascope, a conference dedicated to interactive narrative, adventure games, and interactive fiction by bringing together writers, developers, and players.
My talk was on Fantasy Filing Systems, Interactive Narratives of the OS. I demonstrated game engines and storytelling using the operating system, including folder poetry, command line text games using the file system, storytelling via forms, dialog builders, and more. I teach some of these techniques and have created a variety of games and stories using these techniques that I was able to demonstrate.
Pomelo added to the Electronic Literature Collection
My 2019 work Pomelo was added to the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 4, charged with showcasing exemplary works of eliterature from 2016-2021.
The editorial team's statement about my work:
Pomelo: A Yoko Ono 'Grapefruit' generator, created for NaNoGenMo 2019, by Lee Tusman, with a Live demo available, is a generator of instruction pieces revisiting and honoring Yoko Ono’s work. These randomly generated event scores are in line with Fluxus’ indeterminacy and aleatory practices, showing how digital media expand the intermedia features from previous forms of artistic experimentation. [Since 2013, National Novel Generation Month has had 9 editions, with c. 570 works categorized as “complete.” We have solicited 6 of these works for publication in ELC4, attempting to illustrate the diverse approaches that NaNoGenMo motivates. Use the NaNoGenMo Genre keyword to discover the other five.]
I am excited to have my work recognized and shared by ELC, which I think does a great job of showing the diversity of elit authors working today.
Sleeping Through the Pandemic
Link to arcade (Console-ing Passions arcade page)
My work Sleeping Through the Pandemic was exhibited as part of Console-ing Passions - International Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media, and Feminism, curated by Anastasia Salter. I really enjoyed checking out the other included works in the online program.
Coming up
Engelberg Center Fellowship and Podcast
I am wrapping my fellowship with the NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. For this fellowship I worked on a second season of Artists and Hackers podcast. Look for new episodes to release soon.
Archiving Artist-Run Spaces
I am working on developing tools for DIY arts organizations and assisting in archiving, oral history, photogrammetry and other projects. See ongoing project notes. This project got delayed a bit due to my concussion, but I am working intensely on it now. I am collaborating with more organizations, will be working with A&H podcast designer Caleb Stone, and have been working with friend Peter Erickson on some archiving as well. Look for more about this in the fall.
Concussion recovery
I am still recovering from a bad concussion from February. Although with the large number of projects listed above it looks like I haven't slowed much the truth is that recovery has been much slower than I had hoped. Occasionally I have short term memory issues, brain 'fullness' and headaches, though much less lately. I did several months of concussion therapy, which helped a ton with dizziness.
MycoSpace studio
For the past two years I was a member at NEW INC, an incubator for folks working on art, design and technology. I met lots of folks through this program. Recently I joined a few friends from NEW INC who have formed Mycospace, a wonderful new studio space located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard neighborhood, a few blocks from Fort Greene. Send a message if you'd like to come by for a studio visit or just to meet up. We have 2 balconies, so a balcony bbq should be in the near future. In particular I plan to be there most Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Purchase College
I am excited to begin teaching in my fifth year at Purchase College where I'm Assistant Professor of New Media and Computer Science. It's been a great home and I am so pleased to be working with my fellow faculty and our students.
ExquisiteCorp music
I am recording a good bit of music on my modular synth and will be releasing more of it this fall. I have a bunch of past albums online on Bandcamp, all Creative Commons licensed for re-use. Many of these works become soundtracks for my web-based projects and games.
Get in touch with your own news, comments, wishes, projects and music suggestions.
--Lee