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xstenTarot Code is a deck of animated cards, offering advice for the terrible 2020s.
Original animated cards are lovingly designed and coded in p5.js. They explore the layered meanings and life instructions of 78 tarot cards, and the process and themes of learning how to code.The four suits relate to themes of labour and resources (Coins), intellect (Swords), emotions and the subconscious (Cups), and creativity and enterprise (Wands). These themes are reflected in imagery and movement (the cyclical Coins, directional Swords, psychedelic Cups, and colourful and interactive wan...
xstenLittle Lyell Machines - Context, material, catalogue
Machines mentioned: p5.js; historical documents; a story sequence; the microfiche; View-Master; tunnelling equipment; railways; company organisations; global trade; the share market; an escaped convict’s tent scraper fabricated in 1859 as (empty belly) he tries to clean away mud after a futile day slashing through thick scrub looking for signs of precious metals.1. ContextI spent a few winter days at the site of some extreme mining history in the inhospitable west coast of Tasmania. The lands...
xstenLittle block machines
I did a spontaneous stealth Little Mint Experiment a couple of days ago so am taking a minute after the fact to briefly describe the work.Little Block Machines are 12 x blocks and 12 x color themes made in p5js. The work is an on-chain machine; a system generated at mint in 400 ways. Each machine is made of 12 blocks that are held together by a couple of simple rules, their parts randomised within those constraints. If two blocks stacked vertically are of a similar width, they get a connector...
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xstenTarot Code is a deck of animated cards, offering advice for the terrible 2020s.
Original animated cards are lovingly designed and coded in p5.js. They explore the layered meanings and life instructions of 78 tarot cards, and the process and themes of learning how to code.The four suits relate to themes of labour and resources (Coins), intellect (Swords), emotions and the subconscious (Cups), and creativity and enterprise (Wands). These themes are reflected in imagery and movement (the cyclical Coins, directional Swords, psychedelic Cups, and colourful and interactive wan...
xstenLittle Lyell Machines - Context, material, catalogue
Machines mentioned: p5.js; historical documents; a story sequence; the microfiche; View-Master; tunnelling equipment; railways; company organisations; global trade; the share market; an escaped convict’s tent scraper fabricated in 1859 as (empty belly) he tries to clean away mud after a futile day slashing through thick scrub looking for signs of precious metals.1. ContextI spent a few winter days at the site of some extreme mining history in the inhospitable west coast of Tasmania. The lands...
xstenLittle block machines
I did a spontaneous stealth Little Mint Experiment a couple of days ago so am taking a minute after the fact to briefly describe the work.Little Block Machines are 12 x blocks and 12 x color themes made in p5js. The work is an on-chain machine; a system generated at mint in 400 ways. Each machine is made of 12 blocks that are held together by a couple of simple rules, their parts randomised within those constraints. If two blocks stacked vertically are of a similar width, they get a connector...
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Like the 4 environmental seasons, with their opposing features of heat / cold / scarcity / abundance, each piece is a stand-alone work with its own seasonal texture or mood:
Surveillance Season is a screen to monitor a rain of fragments. The more monitoring performed by the viewer, the more imaginary tokens they receive. Futile work.
Network Season (AKA Psychedelic Islands) features gentle explosions; randomly-generated arrangements of color and shape palettes. A straight-lined symbol or identifier is created from the connections between their epicenters. This translation is a mapping action - distilling complexity into a line on a drawing, pinning the data down, taming by naming. (400 outputs an be viewed here)
Blueprint Season is a game with an identical starting point and endless variations of density, brightness and pattern within the narrow confines of an extremely limited palette and a 10 x 10 gridded structure. While a user can control outcomes to a point, the 100 grids continue to randomly generate, soon over-writing.
Escape Season is a navigation game with only a hint of purpose.
User control and interfaces are explored in all the pieces, sometimes using clear instructions (click OK when the computer tells you to in Surveillance Season), sometimes requiring discovery (in Network Season, while color palettes and constellation lines are fixed, random for each of 400 outputs, the forms are surprisingly dynamic with mouse click / touch screen / resize). In Blueprint Season and Escape Season the user can start to directly shape the visual outcomes.
Seasonal Maps are explorations of assumed interfaces and world-making. Attempted control, incomplete knowledge, a thin thread of the logic beneath chaos, as if the convenient neatness of their quartet gives them meaning when taken together.
Seasonal Maps were created during an intensive period of community learning in the Mathcastles server, home of the seminal Terraforms computer art project, through a course generously created and delivered by artist 113. I’m immeasurably grateful to the inspiration and social context he has built and gifted.
nft://1/0xbF3F48f77eA709870D81948A84062795704e9751/?showBuying=true&showMeta=true
Like the 4 environmental seasons, with their opposing features of heat / cold / scarcity / abundance, each piece is a stand-alone work with its own seasonal texture or mood:
Surveillance Season is a screen to monitor a rain of fragments. The more monitoring performed by the viewer, the more imaginary tokens they receive. Futile work.
Network Season (AKA Psychedelic Islands) features gentle explosions; randomly-generated arrangements of color and shape palettes. A straight-lined symbol or identifier is created from the connections between their epicenters. This translation is a mapping action - distilling complexity into a line on a drawing, pinning the data down, taming by naming. (400 outputs an be viewed here)
Blueprint Season is a game with an identical starting point and endless variations of density, brightness and pattern within the narrow confines of an extremely limited palette and a 10 x 10 gridded structure. While a user can control outcomes to a point, the 100 grids continue to randomly generate, soon over-writing.
Escape Season is a navigation game with only a hint of purpose.
User control and interfaces are explored in all the pieces, sometimes using clear instructions (click OK when the computer tells you to in Surveillance Season), sometimes requiring discovery (in Network Season, while color palettes and constellation lines are fixed, random for each of 400 outputs, the forms are surprisingly dynamic with mouse click / touch screen / resize). In Blueprint Season and Escape Season the user can start to directly shape the visual outcomes.
Seasonal Maps are explorations of assumed interfaces and world-making. Attempted control, incomplete knowledge, a thin thread of the logic beneath chaos, as if the convenient neatness of their quartet gives them meaning when taken together.
Seasonal Maps were created during an intensive period of community learning in the Mathcastles server, home of the seminal Terraforms computer art project, through a course generously created and delivered by artist 113. I’m immeasurably grateful to the inspiration and social context he has built and gifted.
nft://1/0xbF3F48f77eA709870D81948A84062795704e9751/?showBuying=true&showMeta=true
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