Code, language and art

1. VASE7200 Extended Context/Extended Media
Class 07
Art & Language
Analog vs. Digital

2. Schedule
Medium
Autographic vs. allographic
Analog vs. digital
Machine
Code
Image and text

3. Assignment
Desert island exercise
You will be in a desert island for the rest of your life alone.
Before you go, you can bring five favorite items there. Please
bring back the items or images of them on Sat (19 Oct) for
presentation and sharing.

4. Artistic medium

5. Communication medium

6. Autographic art

7. Allographic art

8. Allographic art

9. Visual art
Painters -> paint -> paintings

10. Musical art
Composers -> compose -> scores
Musicians -> perform -> music

11. Notation

12. Performing art

13. Performing art

14. Notation
Musical notes – visual symbols
Are they art?
Are they visual art?

15. Painting about music - Kandinsky

16. Handwritten music notes

17. Diagram without art

18. Picture

19. Picture vs. diagram
What is the difference between a picture and a diagram?

20. Pig

21. Pig

22. Pig

23. Pig

24. Pig

25. Pig
PIG

26. Pig
PIG

27. Analog vs. digital
Analog – dense
Digital – each symbol can be distinguished

28. Analog vs. digital

29. Old vs. new

30. Notation
From the discussion of analog and digital, we come back to
our notation system.

31. Notation

32. Notation

33. Instruction art
Instruction Paintings
By Yoko Ono, 1961
A + B PAINTING
Cut out a circle on canvas A. Place a numeral figure, a roman letter, or a
katakana on canvas B on an arbitrary point.
Place canvas A on canvas B and hang them together.
The figure on canvas B may show, may show partially, or may not show.
You may use old paintings, photographs, etc. instead of blank canvases.

34. Instruction art

35. Instruction art

37. Douglas Huebler
Variable Piece 4, Douglas Huebler
Visitors to the SOFTWARE exhibition are invited to participate in the
transposition of information from one location to another by following
the procedure described below:
• Write or print on this paper an authentic personal secret you have
never revealed before: of course, do not sign it.
• Slip the paper into the slot of the box provided at this location.
Complete the exchange of your secret for that of another person
by requesting a photo-copy of one previously submitted.

38. Sol Lewitt
No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an
idea and when an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it
means that all of the planning and decisions are made
beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.
The idea becomes a machine that
makes the art.

39. Sol Lewitt

40. Sol Lewitt

41. Sol Lewitt
THE LOCATION OF A CIRCLE
1. From the center of the square, draw a line halfway toward
the upper right corner.
2. From the end of this line, draw a line to the midpoint of
the right side.
3. A point halfway between the midpoint of the right side and
the midpoint of the bottom side is the center of a circle.
4. The diameter is the length of line 1. Draw the circle.

42. Desktop publishing
Postscript
%!
%% Draws a one square inch box and inch in from the bottom left
/inch {72 mul} def
% Convert inches->points (1/72 inch)
newpath
% Start a new path
1 inch 1 inch moveto % an inch in from the lower left
2 inch 1 inch lineto % bottom side
2 inch 2 inch lineto % right side
1 inch 2 inch lineto % top side
closepath
% Automatically add left side to close path
fill
% Fill in the box on the paper
showpage
% We're done... eject the page

43. Context Free
startshapeDrawing
background {b -1}
rule Drawing {
20 * {r 18 x 3 y 3} Fire {}
}
rule Fire {
100 * {s 0.999} Part {x 1 r 5 h 60}
}
rule Fire {
100 * {s 0.999} Part {x 1.5 r -50 h 0}
}
rule Fire {
100 * {s 0.999} Part {x 1.5 r 10 h 180}
}
rule Part {
CIRCLE {sat 1 b 1}
Part {y 0.9 s 0.99 r 2 h 0.9 a -0.01}
}
rule Part {
CIRCLE {sat 1 b 1}
Part {y 0.7 s 0.99 r -2 h 0.7 a -0.02}
}

44. Drawing with codes

45. Space Odyssey 2001

46. Playing with codes

47. Pantograph

48. Harmonograph

49. Drawing tools

50. Henri Maillardet

51. Jean Tinguely

52. Computer
With the use of computer hardware and software, here are
more experiments with the drawing machines.

53. Harold Cohen

54. Harold Cohen

55. JurgLehni – Hektor

56. Daniel Rozin

57. Jack Pollock

58. Gabriel Orozco

59. Casey Reas

60. Fractal graphics

62. Glitch art

63. Glitch art

64. Generative art in 3D

65. Visual Poetry
Give an expressive form of visual presentation for poetic
language, and constantly enrich typography.

66. Summary
Artist  Artwork
Artist Notation Artwork
Notation
Musical score
Theatre script
Instruction
Software code
Construction diagram
Can notation be art?

67. Ars Electronica

68. Ars Electronica 1999 winner

69. Charles-François Panard
The typographic arrangement by Charles-François Panard
(1694-1765) proves that visual poetry existed long before the
turn of the nineteenth century when figurative arrangements
of type became popular.

70. Charles-François Panard

71. StéphaneMallarmé

72. Guillaume Apollinaire

73. Guillaume Apollinaire

74. Futurist
Futurists explicitly embraced energy and fearlessness – even
war itself. Many of the futurists were very patriotic.
‘A new beauty has been added to the splendor of the world –
the beauty of speed.’
FilippoTommaso Marinetti

75. Ffilippo T. Marinetti

76. Raoul Hausmann

77. Concrete Poetry
Visual poets challenged the words semantically. The text can
be figurative.
Concrete poets visually interpreted their syntax. They use the
patterns of words, letters and punctuation marks to make
statements. The word patterns are usually non-figurative.

78. Joshua Reichert

79. EugenGomringer

80. Christian Morgenstern

81. ASCII Art

82. ASCII Art

83. Emoji Song

84. Title sequence
One of the very common use of image and text in creative
works are title sequence for film with motion graphics.

85. John Whitney

86. Saul Bass

87. Len Lye

88. Kyle Cooper

89. More
There are more concepts about the digital media:
Live coding
Interface
Embodiment
To be continued…