Re: Hardware/software:2
- To: Louis Frazier <cogniscu@xxxxxxx>
- Subject: Re: Hardware/software:2
- From: Sherwin Gooch <sherwin@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Jan 96 15:13:04 -0800
- Cc: Wayne Morellini <waynem1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, misc<misc>, hud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- References: <Pine.SV4.3.91.960131111301.17862A-100000@purple>
- Reply-To: Sherwin_Gooch@xxxxxxxxxx
Louis Frazier,
I am sorry to be so verbose in this file, but since you ask:
("I am interested in learning from anyone who has ideas about
applying MISC to art.")
Hud Nordin and I began developing an application in 1988, called
VidSynth. VidSynth is an application, currently available for the
Macintosh, which allows artists to create animated video synthesis
artworks by menu selection, composition of functions (chaining), or
by describing the formula(e) directly in a C-subset-style notation.
The entire approach we have taken is to keep the descriptions of
the geometries comprising the animations segmentable to the pixel
level. In other words, we can transform the descriptions of the
artworks into a separate equation for each pixel, or group of
pixels, which describes the color of each pixel independently at
each point in time.
We did this, in part, because we forsaw a time in the future when
there would be parallel machines which would contain large groups of
processors. It is our intention to evaluate these functions in
parallel, without blocking due to data-dependencies stemming from
neighboring geometries. It is our hope and belief that this
approach will allow highly complex animations to be rendered in
real-time.
We have explored a significant part of the simple mathematics which
is convenient to this architecture, and recorded the results on
videotapes, to which we hold copyright. Creating these artworks is
not as simple as it might seem; mathematics is a large space, and
very little of it is interesting to look at. We currently have a
library comprising a few thousand of these animated artworks. Many
thousands of man-hours were required to create this library.
When someone finally builds a million processor machine, we are
ready to use it. I believe that MISC affords the most expedient
path to the implementation of such a machine.
Thank you for your kind indulgence,
Sherwin Gooch
Begin forwarded message:
Resent-Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 12:23:11 -0500
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 11:13:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis Frazier <cogniscu@tmn.com>
To: Wayne Morellini <waynem1@cq-pan.cqu.edu.au>
cc: misc <misc@pisa.rockefeller.edu>, Wayne Morellini
<waynem1@cq-pan.cqu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Hardware/software:2
In-Reply-To: <199601310605.QAA26984@cq-pan.cqu.edu.au>
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Wayne, I don't know if this kicks off (HS)embedded, but I'll give
it a try.
I blush to say such obvious things in the presence of Chuck and probably
Jeff as well as anyone else who knows what went on at Xerox Parc
(Palo Alto Research Center) 25 year ago, but xx21 processors should
be in
every printer in the world. I found my way to FORTH via Postscript, the
rpn language which is the defacto standard for page/screen description.
It is the standard because it is best able to put points on a surface or
in space. I don't know which came first (I'm sure someone will tell me
shortly), but Forth and PS are so much alike, either could be
encapsulated in the other -- and probably has been.
This brings me to the mass market. Sun is touting "net-centric" computing
in trade shows this week. They are talking about the successor to the PC
being a good display and keyboard hooked to a fast graphics computer that
gets all it's software and information from the net, at three
megahertz, as
it needs it. I'm betting that xx21-type hardware (MISC, FORTH) will
be the
best candidate for these systems which will be more pervasive than laser
printers in a few years.
HTML, the primitive composition program we are using on the net
today, can
easily be written in Postscript. (Adobe has no doubt done it.) Netscape
and all the other browsers are going to be forced to go to Postscript
eventually to be really competitive. Things are happening awfully fast
right now, and probably most of the software work is in alpha at least.
People who are interested in applications these days can start with
silicon, as Chuck has proven with MuP21. We who are following MISC are
on the leading edge of something big and it behooves us to learn as much
as we can from each other, whatever our interests are.
At 70 I consider myself an artist dedicated to expressing the
beauty and the
power of the technologies we've been working in and applying since
Edison
invented the triode.
I want my art to demonstrate the leading edge of networking. I want to
build a piece that is a free-standing entity on the net, able to
interact
with its viewers, ascertain their interests and go to the net to satisfy
them - with music, images, sounds, questions, answers -- anything that
seems to interest them. I expect that many artists will produce
thousands
of works in the next few years to appeal to a new generation of
technology-aware art lovers, just the way millions of painters and
sculptors have met their aesthetic needs in the past.
To do this, artists will need all the usual art materials plus vast
quantities of cheap chips like xx21's, just they way they've consumed
millions of tubes of paint since someone put paint in a lead tooth paste
tube and started the impressionist movement of outdoor painting in the
19th century. I am interested in learning from anyone who has ideas about
applying MISC to art.