8 minute read
Art & Coding
from REACTION
Here's a taste of what's featured in our issue REACTION. The release date is Sunday August 26 7pm-11pm at O'Donovans Pub 101 e. 3rd St Pomona, CA
Guy Glikshtein talk about the conceptualization of using coding to create your art for you.
Photo by Melanie Smith
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Art & Coding
Made by: Marlena Martinez & Melanie Smith
In thought deeper than what is obvious and beyond tangible reach, organic desire to create a reactive invention ties together the inevitable bond of coding, art, culture and society. In our contemporary world, none of these things exist separately.
Guy’s conceptualized inventions introduce us to a space where our environment reacts to us, rather than us reacting to our environment; Revealing how our relationship with environment created through sophisticated coding can change the way we make art.
Conceptualize
We arrive to Guy’s place around one or two pm and knock on his Mid-City apartment door. Though he’s just gotten back from starting his day at a nearby coffee shop he offers us coffee. We talk casually about composting while a small shot is brewed on his stove top. His house is decorated with an abundance of jungle-like plants, a pothos vine climbs across two walls--above his computer and over the sliding door to the balcony. It’s in that space where Melanie and I sit on a long comfy couch that faces his workspace. He sits at his desk, where on the screen it looks like he may be working on a layout design for a client. Above the computer screen is a TV screen and across the rest of his desk sits a turntable and laptop that is gently playing trap music.
Guy begins to talk about one of his conceptual pieces, the music fades and the sounds of birds from outside become more audible. The conversation progresses and the possibilities of using coding to create art become the focal point of our conversation.
MARLENA M.Your whole concept is based around the possibilities of coding right? Or in the technicalities of it at least?
GUY G.The possibilities of it because look, fuck, everything is coding right now, everything. Really. A year and a half ago I was working on all of these more “technological” projects where I was thinking about computer reaction. I think that’s where my fascination with reaction is on a more specific level rather than, this very general like “yes, everything is a reaction” thing because if everything is a reaction, then a reaction is one of the most human things ever. So then the question is, how do we construct a reaction from a computer, because...if you’re a digital artist more like me [then] you know...My world is in this virtual world. [For] more organic artists, you still talk to a computer, so the way a computer reacts to you is crucial. So- yeah that’s a fascinating concept.
So I thought of like your environment, your home, your studio, effects you and reacts to you. And then how you as an artist communicate with that and what’s the relationship there. So rather than you reacting to your environment, just as we always do as artists and as people, you’ll have your own environment reacting to you, by taking pictures and manipulating them and like kind of code and processing and all that, and then always updating a bank, like a portfolio of images that your environment, your furniture, took. My way of thinking about it is creating these furniture that capture the environment and react, and you know process the images that they take.
MELANIE S.So the furniture becomes the artists in a sense.
GG. Yeah exactly. I wrote a piece of code that has certain variables that are open for interpretation, there is a strict system but open variables and these variables always change. Now, what I can do is change that randomness into an input from something else. And it’s kind of based on this previous project, which I can go into to; it’s more focusing on facebook and making music out of your facebook feed but that’s a different thing. The point is that there is a system that is ready for an input, and it’s ready to translate it into visuals. So It says I’m going to take X and translate it into whatever particles this is, and I’m going to take Y and translate it into the number of particles and, I’m going to take Z and translate it into the shape that it’s doing with the particles and then B I’m going to translate it into the background. And then, the point is that, then your desk could take a picture of something. It’s a filter that translates, and again if I knew more code then you could create way, way, way, cooler stuff. This was, again, I was like, “That’s not really, really cool on its own, that’s not really, really cool on it’s own,” but all of them together is what I’m trying to get into this thing, where… It’s kind of like finding a different outline of certain images and then… it almost looks like a doodle. But again, it’s all automatic, it’s all from these other photos, all from these patterns, and then I ended up using these patterns that I really loved for another project. I just needed a weird pattern. [The project] was all about this new--it was a TV show. It was about all of this like new kind of like wave of thoughts and schools, and you know digital world and blah blah, so you know, I mean, that fit perfectly, and these patterns were all…
MS. A template.
GG. Right, and that’s exactly the point. Like I don’t need to create these patterns anymore, I’ve just got this environment that just does it for me, it’s like collaborators!
and what’s more of an assistant than a person! You know that was your assistant for years, so and like you know, c’mon, this has been the conversation in so many aspects for about one hundred fifty years, ya know, since machines really started replacing human beings in these like repetitive work. These things that are beyond the design, right? Cause this is why design became important, like, there was no more need for that one person to build a chair, right? So it’s not about the fucken, the woods, the craft person, the you know who built the chair, it’s about the designer who can design a system for the machine to build a chair. And it’s about knowing how to kind strategize the parts in an efficient way that the machine can understand, and then that’s it, that became the artist. The point is that my mind was blown when I started learning that this thing was possible. Started learning it, realized what I can do with it, and so had to think of something to do with it. Right? I was like, alright. How do I take this whole reaction thing? Because it is like this thing where I’m talking to the computer, and that’s why I’m so fascinated with coding because, again, we’re all fucking using coding. And I’m talking about the DMV, the IRS, your health system, like everything. Everything.
I picked CHUCK a coding language developed here in California.It’s a coding language specifically for music. So you write a code and then you hit, ‘do your thing’, and it plays music. It’s about taking a code and having a system that reinterprets the code as sound. We’re used to having a code that’s showing a website or showing a software or showing you something...But when you play a code and you hit render and then it plays music, It’s BEYOND I did it. It’s like, What the hell is going on! You know? What’re the possibilities? So then I’m like if this is the reaction I’m getting from it, then what’s the next reaction in the chain right?
I thought of social network. This idea of social networking is this very, very, very, abstract fundamental [way of looking at it], way more than music even, this idea of engaging and sharing, and being apart of a network.. That’s arguably the most important thing for a human to have.
I created this system that was like reinterpreting posts, and reactions, cause reactions is a big part of facebook right, it’s not a ‘like’ anymore it’s a reaction, so combining the posts and reactions I kind of translated into a system of combining waves with modulations of the waves and then I kind of limited the kind of frequencies, and every reaction is harmonizing the initial post sound, with these kind of different chords.
MM. So you’re breaking down the sounds that each one of your clicks makes?
GG. So for example there’s always an original post and then an initial reaction to a post, that’s how I kind of thought about the general idea of facebook right now. Like you post something and then there’s a reaction to it. This is the ping pong right?
MS. How do you capture the reaction in order for it to…
GG. Everything is captured. Everything is in code, like that’s the whole point. The whole point is that all this intricate system of human interaction, and building identity and building a character, and building your environment, and it’s like, It’s so important. And it’s so much online now, and it’s all through code. I’m breaking it down. Post and reaction. So I’m saying every post, you know there’s a status change, a photo post, when you like a page, all these things that you post, and then all the things that people react to, and then the original posts would be these one frequency waves, and then the reaction would be the modulation of those waves. And that’s how music works, there’s this initial clean sound, and then it’s about how you harmonize it, how you sequence it, what effects you put on it, does it have reverb, does it echo, is it distorted, is it high frequency, low frequency, all these things right? But that’s the whole thing. You start from this initial frequency and then you modulate it in a way. And then you put it all together, all these frequencies and modulations to create music. So, you see what I mean? For example a post would be boop, then a reaction to the post would be taaaa, like taking that note and making a major chord third.
MS. That’s controlled by you?
GG. No that’s controlled by the system. So the system says, If you post a status change, play a sine wave at five thousand hertz frequencies, and then whenever somebody in your network reacts uh, “Ha Ha” reaction, it’s pitching down an octave. So it’s taking that initial note, this ‘oo’ and it’s (high pitch to low) oo OOOOOO, Does this thing where it’s going down an octave. Or if you ‘Loved’ it then it’s this very slow, major chord like a very happy, ‘aAAaAAaaaah.’
So what’s the point here? The point is it’s kind of manifested in this weird speaker, tiny speaker, that’s like...you’re supposed to put it in your ear and listen to this orchestra, so the speaker that’s connected with the system with your facebook and translates all these endless infinite amounts of posts and reactions that are going on to create your kind of social network diary as a musical piece. And it’s all about having all these different sounds. So for example, I don’t know, if you post a lot of funny stuff you’re gonna have more like, ‘ta ta ta ta,’ like changing pitches right? And if you post more… I, I-- I don’t know more heroic like uh, stuff about pets, I don’t know what, then you’re going to have more like super lovey dovey major chords. If you’re more of a political I don’t know what, then you’re gonna have more of like fast, aggressive, dissonance, the ones that are like angry, you know what I mean? Or sad. And it all plays through this speaker that you put up to your ear.
Guy studied graphic design at Cal Arts and was a graduate in the May class of 2017. There he delved deeper into thoughts of graphic design and how the changing world affects the way we communicate.
Hope you enjoyed this taste of REACTION. Celebrate the release with us Sunday August 26 7pm-11pm at O'Donovans Pub 101 e. 3rd St Pomona, CA
