GRAPHIC DESIGN

illustrationsvector artinfo graphics

typography

grids & layout

conceptual designphoto manipulation

collage

INTERACTIVE ART

installations

interfaces

arduino

processing

software

coding

interactivity

hardware

NEW MEDIA

motion graphicsvideo art

interactive infographics

3d graphics

computer languagesmixing media

animationcomputer game graphics

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<SO WHAT DO I REALLY LIKE?>

NEW MEDIAGRAPHIC DESIGN

INTERACTIVE ART

[NEW MEDIAU

GRAPHIC DESIGN

U

INTERACTIVE ART]

C:\PLOTTING THE AREAS?>

C:\INTERSECTION OF THE AREAS?>

C:\EXPANDING THE AREAS?>

At the beginning of this project I did not knew what to investigate, what do I like the most. Therefore I have started to plot my interest using Venn diagrams. See illus-trations above. This helped me to see the boundaries of each of my interest and the possible area that would contain most of my interest in design and art field.

After finishing with plotting these areas I have decided to investigate the inter-

section of area of Graphic Design, New Media and Interactive art as this area is the quite interesting to study. However at that time I did not knew if my area had already been name or it has practices thus I continued my project with researching the history of software art & design.

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<HISTORY OF [NM GD IA]>

U U

<HISTORY OF THIS AREA>

I started my research of Software art by reading Golan's Levin essay "Audiovisual Software Art: A Partial History" which briefly explain software art and its part in current world. This essay gave me the insight of how the software art begun and what artists / software engineers were the most notable out of all.

<JOHN WHITNEY>

was an American animator, composer and inven-tor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation. While researching him I was strucked by the visualisations that he managed to create even though he was using very basic technol-ogy. Also, from his work we could notice the trends that future software / computational

f

art followed. Futhermore, I noticed that a lot of his artwork have been used in his time movies and animations hence his artwork even at that time was in high demand.

<ED TANNENBAUM>

The next person that I was surprised by while doing the research about the history of this still vaguely described area is Ed Tannenbaum.

As I understand Ed is a installation artists, he created many permanent / temporary installations using software / hardware based equipment that he himself created. I did not researched him a lot as

it is just the side history research but nonethe-less his work is quite interesting and I think worth showing it. Bellow are the videos of his work that I found during this short research...

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of

<MYRON KRUEGER>

I was quite surprised by the Myron Krueger maybe not by its visual language but the time he was creating his artwork. It was in late 80s, its the time that I thought that do not possibly could have such inter-active installations as he did, I thought that these installations were quite more or less current time art form. Briefly Myron Krueger is an American com-puter artist who developed early interactive works.

<FIRST INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS & ARTISTS>

He also contributed a lot to creation of virtual reality and augmented reality phenomena. Due to the time he was making the interactive installations the visual language is not so impressive nowadays however few of his works are interesting. He is most know for his artificial reality laboratory called "Videoplace".

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<CURRENT PRACTITIONERS>

<JASON BRUGES STUDIO>

This studio was suggested by Eva during one of this project tutorials. I was really amazed by this studio and its work as they are doing a lot of new media artworks / projects but for the commercial use. This is quite interesting as not many commer-cial projects are so innovative. Additionally I have actually seen some of this studios work in V&A gal-lery Decode exhibition. Jason Bruges Studio has been

creating many many more interactive / new media pro-jects and could go on and on about them, if you want to learn more about this studio here is the link to their website http://www.jasonbruges.com/.

P.S. This studio is one of my intern ship possibili-ties, I mean I would like to work in this studio due to its immense creative power and freedom.

<UNITED VISUAL ARTISTS // UVA>

UVA is more new media installation making studio. It is closely working with musicians making scenery for their music videos or concerts� The first time that I stumlbed uppon UVA was during Warp project in which we were asked to investigate Warp record label and I found out that UVA collaborated with music group Battles to make their music video.

UVA have been doing a lot of different projects for the pas almost 10 years in various mediums, if you would like to learn more please check their website http://www.uva.co.uk/

<UNIVERSAL EVERYTHING>

Universal Everything is a group quite similar to UVA or Jason Bruges studio. It also makes art installa-tions using new media medium but for a commercial usage. I have not knew about his company before doing this research but I had seen few of its work. Also the creator of Universal Everything Matt Pyke collaborated with Karsten Schmidt on several occa-sions such as Audi TT / Viral Video commercial.

<TOMATO // INTERACTIVE>

I was introduced with Tomato art & design group last year when few of the founders of it had a presenta-tion of this studio / collaboration in our univer-sity. Even at very beginning I was strucked by the vast ammount of work that this group are creating not only in new media, installation work or video but also in printing, illustration, photography and graphic design.

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN // SELECTED ARTISTS>

<GOLAN LEVIN>

I stumbled upon Golan Levin I think around four years ago when I saw his talk on ted.com about how software is an art. At that point I still couldn�t comprehend the hidden ideas of what he was talking about and that actually I could pursue the same kind of future / work as he does.

Also, as mentioned before I have started the investigation itself with Golan�s essay, which can be found in his website http://www.flong.com/. The reason of why Golan is interesting is that although his ideas are sligltly coming more from scientific / engineering point of view it still is very interesting

<KARSTEN SCHMIDT>

The first time that I learned who Karsten Schmidt actually was, was during decode exhibition in V&A last year. There I have started to become more and more into coding / scripting side of art / design. The following month me and my friends visited workshops in V&A gallery and accidentally managed to get into his leading workshop regarding processing program and open source movement itself. During it I first saw the potential of computational design and realised that I, student, can start and do something similar.

Additionally Karsten Schmidt visited our university and gave a talk about his work and his ideas. I found this presentation wonderful and inspiring.

One of the most interesting things in his show was the idea that art / design should be done through process rather than idea. It means that experimenting and developing through work becomes more significant than conceptual idea... And this though is what I would like to investigate in my this design investigation brief...

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<QUESTIONS // DIFFERENT METHOD>

<ME IN ENTER 9>

Additionally, as a part of this investigation I did something different, I curated and led a workshop of processing and openSource movement at international multimedia festival ENTER 9 (Siauliai, Lithuania).

I planned the workshop into 3 different parts. First part was mainly concerned by the explaining the ideology of the by using designed presentation which showed the examples of possibility and conceptual ideas behind it. The second part was introducing auditory to Processing language as well as its fun-damental syntaxes. And the third part which I think was the most interesting one, it was an experimental one - the one that was meant to teach participants of the remix culture ideology. I have created six processing programs which are based using toxiclibs

library and combining it with several scripts which al-low PDF / Video export. The participants had two hours for this part and the end result was quite interesting as it allowed them to see how programming could lead to unique and original results.

I have participated in an open discussion with a title Media studies in Lithuania and abroad. Representing the abroad universities were me and two students from Gold-smith and Saint Martins and the "opposing" group were professors from leading universities in Lithuania. The discussion were quite interesting and intriguing. It was as a success and give me not only courage to speak and teach the audience but also gave an insight of what I might do in the future of my career.

So after the research that I have done I needed to start getting in contact with them. I have decided to contact Karsten Schmidt and Golan Levin as their work, ideas are very close to my own ideas and it is actually what I would like to do in the future. Thus, I have developed questions that I will ask them and hopefully I will get quite a good insight of what it feels to work as a computational designer. Questions follows:

How do you manage to engage your clients with new media / code design products ideas? Or do the clients already expect that?

How do you collaborate? Do you search for people / designers to collaborate with or they themselves find you?

What do you think computational designers should seek?

How do you manage to balance your own personal practice in relation with client based practice?

Is Computational / Code Based design & art receives a sufficient amount of funding from clients, etc...? Or, where else could you get that funding from?

What future do you think awaits for computational designers?

How do you think computational designers needs to be that he / she won't lose their "soul"?

<QUESTIONS>

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<OUTCOME // EVABOT-1>

<ME IN ENTER 9>

Bellow is the screenshot of the artefact. It can be accessed through http://povilas.uogintas.lt/chatbot/The fist layer - background contain a processing.js program containing modified script from Karsten Schmidt ToxiClibs library. The second layer is the actual evaBot-1, which contains the contents of my design investigation.

The Feedback that I have got from my coursmates and frieds about this chatBot were very possitive thus I am rather happy about the outcome. However, it still can be improved greatly. First of all, the chatbot itself could be based not on the Eliza but on the

Jabberwacky chatbotter because it is more advance and contains better algorythims for answering to the ques-tions. And finally, it still needs the answers that I am still hoping to get from Karsten Schmidt and Golan Levin.

After the research and in a way not very successful primary research I started to think of what I will do as an artefact that reflects my field of study - computational design. So I emerged myself into studies of what reflects computation and after several brainstorming session I come up with an interesting and strange conclusion - to make a robot / chatBot as an artefact (its because during brainstorm session my friend send me the link with Doctor Who tv show). chatBot / robot reflects my study a lot as robot mainly are considered as computing / non-organic machines. Also, this chatbot will provide an unique new way of interacting not only with a computer (through chatting) but also changes how we get the information about something. Therefore, after thinking a bit I have decided to create a chotBot as my artefact. The following post will be regarding the research of the Artificial Intelligence and chatBots.

<RESEARCH>

In order to create the artefact I did a small research of the current existing chatBots. The following text are the ex-cerpts from my development blog.

I have started my artefact research with one of the oldest and first AI systems called ELIZA. The best information that I found about it was from although con-sidered as a bad source was Wikipedia but it contained a summary of the informa-tion that I found elsewhere thus I believe that the information of Wikipedia page as true. "ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by process-ing users" responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly

human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 to 1966. When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, respond-ing to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?" The response to "My mother hates me� would be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was implemented using simple pattern matching techniques." (excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA). The example of ELIZA bot could be found here http://chayden.net/eliza/Eliza.html, although it is a modernised version of it, the idea behind it is the same.

The next AI chatbotter that I looked at, was suggested by Eva in of the last tutori-als for this project - its Jabberwacky. "Jabberwacky is an artificial intelligence - a chat robot, often known as a "chat-bot" or "chatterbot". It aims to simulate natural human chat in an interesting, entertaining and humorous manner. Jabber-wacky is different. It learns. In some ways it models the way humans learn language, facts, context and rules. The whole thing started way back in 1988, and went on the web in 1997. It is unique - not related to any other known AI technologies! The "gen-eral AI" of Jabberwacky stores everything everyone has ever said, and finds the most appropriate thing to say using contextual pattern matching techniques. In speaking to you it uses just that learnt material, and borrows a little bit of your intelli-gence as it learns more. With no hard-coded rules, it relies entirely on the principles of feedback. This is very different to the majority of chatbots, which are rule-bound and finite." (excerpt from http://www.jab-berwacky.com/j2about) This excerpt briefly explains what Jabberwacky is and why I did not chose to use its code for my artefact as it is far too complicated and difficult for me to understand.

<WHY CHATBOT?>

by Povilas Uogintas

COMPUTATIONAL DESIGNinvestigation of<ANSWERS & CONTACT REPORT>

My design investigation project progressed in an arithmetical progression - the beginning was slow while the ending of the project was energetic and quick. At the beginning I did not yet know what I will actually investigate, what area to choose or where to start. The reason for this is that I do not know yet to what area of design / art industry I am reaching out to. Thus it was hard to focus myself into some particular area. I therefore had begun this project with an analytical, mathematical approach by mapping all areas of interests as multiple Venn diagrams. The result was that my field of study became the intersection area between Graphic design, Interactive art and new media [Graphic Design Interactive Art New Media].

My research begun when I read Golan Levin's essay "Audiovisual Software Art: A Partial History" as it contained the information regarding software art history. From it I found the origins of computer or software art which began in the early 60s with artists such as John Whitney, Ed Tannenbaum and Myron Krueger. I was thrilled by the fact that all the interactive installations that are popular at the moment are not a current "inventions" but rather the experiments of early software art pioneers. Therefore I started to think that there must exist a named area of art & design that would be within the [GD IA NM] area. After a while I realised that this area is the area that I already know - its computational design.According to Golan Levin and Karsten Schmidt, computational design is the discipline of applying computational approaches to design problems, whether related to presentation, analysis or aesthetic expressions. And this description is the best way to describe this particular area. My research in it began with looking into the present practitioners of this area where I looked through companies / studios such as Universal Everything, United Visual

Artist, Jason Bruges, etc. However I based my project not on the work of the group of people but on the work of Golan Levin and Karsten Schmidt as they are the individuals in this field who are pushing the limits of what is possible and this is what interests me in this field.

The goal of this investigation was actually to prepare myself for the future which could be similar to Golan's and Karstens' thus the main question of this investigation was how to become a successful computational designer without losing your soul, similarly as Adrian Shaughnessy wrote in his book for Graphic Designers. In all there were seven questions which were created to gain more knowledge of this field. However, the interviews did not go well - neither Golan nor Karsten replied to any of my emails, thus I got some answers from the interviews that I found on the internet. Additionally, I took another different way of research - I curated and led workshops and presentations about Computational Design & Art in international media festival Enter 9 (Siauliai, Lithuania).

The final step in my investigation was the artefact which is a completely different approach altogether - I have created evaBot-1 - the chatting bot which will have all the research knowledge of this project. There were three reasons of why I have chosen the chat bot idea: firstly, it represents computer computational thinking, secondly, it makes computer to have a more "human" face, and finally, it gives a different experience of gaining information through cyberspace. In conclusion, I think this investigation together with its outcome or artefact was a success even though I did not manage to get the responses from the industry but through it I learned what it is needed to be done in order to start my own independent future in the design and art area.

UU

U U

<CONTACT REPORT>Sadly, my emailing �session� was not successful no one had replied, however I did not mind that as I found many different and interesting interviews with Golan Levin and Karsten Schmidt thus I could find answers to several of my questions for the submission of this investigation. The following text are the answers that I managed to find out:

What do you think computational designers should seek?

Bellow are the several answers that I manage to answer using interviews with Golan Levin and Karsten Schmidt it is presented in a mash up of quotes from the interviews.

"Do not really give much consideration to categories like "art", "design", "performance", "science". These boxes may be helpful for making sense of the past, but not necessarily for anticipating the future."

"Enjoy pushing the envelope of culture by developing provocative machinery"

"Seek that your work will poses new questions, and prompts people to ask new questions themselves."

"To be effective, it seems to be helpful when your work operates or acts on people in a way they can experience first-hand."

"They need to create their own tool in they creative practice as by doing it they will be truly independed artists / designers from other's people works (well more or less)"

What future do you think awaits for computational designers?

"According to Karsten Schmidt it's safe to say the discipline is currently still in its infancy/Stone Age, and yet we can already see how that approach to design has had a huge influence on architecture,

product design and, of course, interaction design."

"Karsten thinks the growth and importance of the latter is the most important of all, as we start to become more aware of and accept that interactions (between human-human, human-thing and thing-thing) are the invisible strings holding together and forming so many parts of our culture and society."

"Karsten elaborates that in order to properly design new things in the future, we need to pay more attention to these interactions and approach them from all possible sides. Even though most people active in the computational design field currently only explore the visual possibilities, he believs, in the long term, computational literacy as a skill can help."

"According to Golan computation is a likely candidate for the next indispensable augmentation of human intellect, if there is one."

"A lot of that creative industry is clustered into groups of "experts" and big egos, around certain popular tools and/or outputs or schools. When it comes to digital, agency structures are still largely divided into creatives and techies and this needs to change"

How do you think computational designers needs to be that he / she won't lose their "soul"?

"To approach creativity in a more holistic way, in the classic sense of a Renaissance man, to see what you can do with different things, combine them and also collaborate with different people."

"Even though you will try to work / to do many different things, do not be afraid of that... That is not important... Searching for yourself is important"

<ANSWERS>