Look at the code - the source text of any program, as a type of material. See the effects of the code as a material manifestation.
“The Matter of Code” is a story about the Creative Coding practice that eliminates the polarisation of code and matter. It is a story of a “material” that has unique properties, a combination of physical and digital matter that does not produce a simple sum. Its emergent properties allow the creation of a unique experience, something that to designers and artists is otherwise unattainable. This “material” gives way to the creation of complex spatial installations that react to stimuli from the environment, changing the experience of space, its perceptions, and subsequently affecting human emotions. The contact of the digital and physical world has been dominated by the interaction with intermediary screens whose flat surfaces have limited the sensory experience - our understanding of the world is based on motion, action, active and bodily experience. Screens cause the observation and manipulation of symbols, that remove the person from reality. As a result any richness of touch is lost, as the hand’s natural and sophisticated ability to manipulate the object is evaded. Screens have created a distance from the environment that has shaped us, destroying the work of evolution that through hundreds of thousands of years has adapted both the mind and body to the ever changing environment. However, the combination of the possibilities offered by programming, electronics and digital fabrication, will allow us to boldly overcome the barrier of the screen - as a “material” that can “blend bits and atoms” emerges. The space around us will be filled with physical artefacts of digital properties that cannot be passed by indifferently. These objects will engage us with a multi-sensory experience that encourages interaction that acts in accordance to how the world, physically and kinetically, is experienced. Every designer, artist or architect can use this “material” in his creative workshop, without the need of a degree in technology as the barrier of entry has dropped intensely. The simplification of digital technology, open source and open hardware movements, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) culture, and the development of IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for creative coding has allowed
everyone of desire to master this material through experience - in the same way as a sculptor learning to shape wood, stone or clay. This exhibition shows how Creative Coding crosses the boundaries between art, design and science. Further emphasising its presence in many areas of creation. The Creative Coding practice is a call to start thinking in an anti-disciplinary way, to forget about the stereotypical divisions between the humanistic and scientific mind and change the passive recipients of technology into its active creators. Readers become writers. In the words of Douglas Rushkoff, “Program or be programmed”, get access to the civilisation control panel, gain a voice in the discussion about our future. At the heart of our approach to Creative Coding is the permission to create something that is not needed. Accidental wandering and openness to error leads to a wonderful surprise and a creative discovery. We are convinced that this approach gives the chance to create something groundbreaking. Hack the way technology is used, find unexplored areas of code usage and explore seemingly impossible connections at the junction of the physical and digital world. The exhibition “The Matter of Code” has collected a number of works that are just such an exploration, a beginning of numerous artists and designers from Poland and abroad. As well as the best projects of the graduates of the second year of Creative Coding postgraduate studies. Wiesław Bartkowski Curator of “The Matter of Code” exhibition
Move the joystick
Press the button
Take control over the forbidden fruit
Forbidden Fruit Machine Kati Hyyppä, Niklas Roy
The Forbidden Fruit Machine is based on a painting called “The Fall of Man” created by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem in 1592. The painting depicts Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, being tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. When Cornelis made his masterpiece, oil paintings were the hi-tech medium of the time. They featured incredible detail and ultra high resolution. Some 400 years later Kati Hyyppä and Niklas Roy decided to turn Cornelis’ artwork into today’s equivalent top-notch medium, namely, a mechatronic video game. The most essential add-on to Cornelis’ painting is a joystick with which the spectator can take over the destiny of the forbidden fruit. By moving the apple around on a biblical quest, the player can discover exciting special effects hidden in the picture.
Switch the switch Touch the button
Useless Machine Karol Nowak
A Useless Machine is a device that has a function but no direct purpose. It may be intended to make a philosophical point, as an amusing engineering “hack”, or as an intellectual joke. Devices that have no function or that malfunction are not considered to be “useless machines”. The most well-known “useless machines” are those inspired by MIT professor and artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky’s design, in which the device’s sole function is to switch itself off by operating its own “off” switch. Karol’s interpretation of Marvin Minsky’s design adds reflections on the flattening of contemporary interactions with devices. Once, sensually rich interactions now become dominated by screens and smooth, flat, touchable but sensually poor surfaces.
Look into the eye of the mirror Wait to be evaluated
Beholder
Jakub KoĹşniewski, Wojciech Stokowiec Imagine a situation where you do not judge a work of art, but the work of art is judging you. This is exactly what happens when you stand in front of the Beholder, a machine enhanced by machine learning seen as a subset of artificial intelligence. Beholder was trained according to aesthetics sense of its creators. The device evaluates the beauty of people interacting with work on a scale of 1 to 5. By the presented work authors ask nowadays important questions: Is it possible to make objective algorithms? Or maybe a machine only reflects the preferences and prejudices of its creator, know as a data bias?
Rotate the knob and press the button Get to an empty spot
Avoid the red lights
RotoRing Gregory Kogos
RotoRing is a circular puzzle-platformer where you use a custom hardware controller. Its display is made out of 2 orbits of LED lights. You use the dial to control the single brightest light and use the button to jump from one orbit to another. The goal is to get to an empty spot while avoiding the red lights! It’s a fully hardware game – there is no computer inside nor screen. There’s just an Arduino (a microcontroller) inside, 90 LED lights, button and knob. Though author of RotoRing is not a coder, he managed to make this thing work all by himself. RotoRing as Alternative Game Controller (alt.ctrl) was shown at ALT.CTRL.GDC San Francisco 2017. The world’s largest professional game industry event. Moreover RotoRing won the award for best game design at the Tokyo Game Show.
Sing or speak into the microphone Listen to your voice played back by the pipe organ
Acoustic Additive Synth Krzysztof Cybulski
Acoustic Additive Synthesiser is another trial to create a fully acoustic device that could resynthesise any sound by the means of Fourier analysis and resynthesis, thus utilising basic principles of spectral music in realtime. It is in fact a small pipe organ, with pitch and volume controlled by a computer. Each of the seven pipes has a motorised slider, which, changes the pitch continuously, and a dedicated motorised air valve, which effectively changes the volume of the sound. As the sound of the organ pipes is very close to a sinusoid, this setup, together with purpose-written Pure Data patch, allows for resynthesis of voice or the creation of quasi-synthetic sounds. Alternatively, the instrument may be used as a regular pipe organ, but with ability to play glissandos or any off-the–12TET microtonal pitches. The presented work was Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2017 and get to Guthman Instrument Competition semifinal, 2016
Bring your ear close to the picture Listen to the voice from the towers
The Voice From The Towers Michał Sęk
The Voice From The Towers is a generative installation honoring the 9/11 victims and is made from their last phone calls. On 9/11/2001, people trapped above the impact point could contact the outside world only through a phone call. Some of them called their loved ones, but all they heard was the sound of an answering machine. We designed a generative sound-toimage installation turning the last phone calls of six 9/11 victims into visuals symbolic of the Twin Towers. We wanted to pay them a tribute and make sure their stories will live on in a very intimate way. Each visual is unique, made with a generative code and silkscreen printed. Each voice can be heard only by getting close to the installation. Designed for the togetherness of the listener and the sound. The voice doesn’t exist without the listener. Presented work won the gold award KTR 2019 in the best of design category. KTR is the largest creativity competition in Poland.
Sing or speak into the microphone Listen to your voice be decomposed and reconstructed in space Hear the echo
Urban Echo Klem Jankiewicz
Urban Echo is an interactive installation exploring our relationship with technology. A swarm of electronic objects decomposes human voice and reconstructs it in space. Our unique voice turns into the voice of the swarm. It is also an anti-black-box statement. All of the carefully designed electronic components, usually hidden inside plastic shells, are used as a form and visual identity of the objects. Urban Echo was part of a theater play Roja, written and directed by Monika Popiel for Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, and was also exhibited during World Maker Faire in New York.
Touch the porcelain cover
Encourage others to do the same
Face each other until you feel the heat
Meet up, heat up Gosia Nierodzińska
This is a code-controlled city furnace. It resembles a brazier covered with a porcelain lid - a quote from a domestic furnace. When at least two people touch it, the furnace heats up. If one person goes away, the temperature drops. Meet up, heat up is an attempt to create an “infinite place: open, unfinished, difficult to define, because its main feature is to be open to the unexpected” (after Encore Heureux). In the face of the challenges of our time, we need to maintain hope and attempt to get closer to one another. We need neoshamanic bonfires, common rituals and places of safe closeness. I wish that meet up, heat up can become such place, a common ritual. It’s meant to be an inspirational experiment, ephemeral, but nonetheless concrete, based on solidarity and closeness in the face of the ubiquitous winter.
Enter the address scratched on the table Turn on the sound in your device and watch what happens
Tanganyika: Al-Khwārizmī, Burton, Assange Paweł Janicki
This impressive, interpassive installation was created especially for the “The Matter of Code” exhibition. It is a synthesis of several threads. History leading to the recent arrest of Julian Assange – founder WikiLeaks. Some elements of the biography of Richard Francis Burton - freethinker, orientalist, linguist and swordsman, the first European who reached Tanganyika Lake, translator of Arab Night into European languages and author of the original poetic text of The Kasîdah of Hājî Abdû El-Yezdî, written under the pseudonym Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî. And finally, the scientific achievements of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Persian mathematician from whose name the word algorithm comes from. The installation approaches functioning in isolation, in contrast to the mainstream and social status quo (and even about social gag imposed on individuality) as well as communication discontinuity, but also the possibility of silent mutual understanding over cultural and semiotic barriers.
Observe the crawling bread - robot Do not eat it
Do not touch it
Oh yes! You can take a selfie
Cracow’s Bread Janek Simon
Cracow’s Bread is an attempt to check where the limits of homemade robotics lie. How far you can get by producing advanced technology objects by yourself. This is one of the artist’s series of works that were intended to prove that many objects produced by corporations can be created by yourself, thus making yourself independent of the socio-economic system. It is also a manifestation of the artist’s interest in unstructured cognitive activity, like the creative damaging of objects by children. By creating absurd mechanisms, he reminds us of the absurd around us. Generates nonsense, in which, the nonsense of everyday life looks like in the mirror. We experience such an absurdity by looking at moving Cracow bread-robot, technologically advanced (for the time when it was created in 2006), a bizarre object without a function.
Bring the earphone close to your ear Listen to the music reshaping the Blob
Blob
Martyna Chojnacka
Blob is an audioreactive, geometric creation that changes its shape under the influence of sounds, physically representing them. Blob is a visualisation transferred from the screen to the physical world. The combination of sounds, shapes and motion with the help of technology, engages senses, provokes to focus, explore and be in the situation here and now. The sculpture can fulfill various functions of data visualisation. Currently the author deals mainly with audioreaction and uses Blob in live performances. Blob’s replicas with altered geometry and dimensions played in theatrical performances.
Try to play on each side of the piano Experience different types of AI
Up-art’A Arkadiusz Klej
Up-art’A allows you to experience different types of relationships with artificial intelligence (AI). Learning to play the piano has been used to metaphorically look at possible paths of AI development, which are represented by the four sides of the instrument. Do you want to stop AI development? The “Reversion” side act as a normal piano. Or maybe the machine should allow you to make only the right decisions? The “Protector AI” side allows you to press only the right keys. In a perfect world, machines strengthen our potential. The “Enhanced AI” side is the only one aiming at our development, teaching how to play, with it we can achieve more. But do applications on your phone develop your skills? Will the machine or its creator make such a decision to develop us? The “Superintelligence” side is completely uninterested in us, realising its own agenda. Up-art’A was developed as a semester project at School of Ideas department of SWPS University.
The exhibition was prepared by: Curator: Wiesław Bartkowski Producer: Klementyna Jankiewicz Graphics and illustrations: Klara Jankiewicz Design: Klementyna Jankiewicz, Yariv Ziv, Wiesław Bartkowski Text correction: Tamara Olbrys, Aleksandra Janus Implementation: Karol Nowak, Klementyna Jankiewicz, Yariv Ziv, Wiesław Bartkowski, Szymon Pepliński Authors of the works: Martyna Chojnacka: antidisciplinary coder creating visual experiences from live generated animations to installations. A graduate of Creative Coding. Krzysztof Cybulski: Musician and sound artist, co-founder of new media art collective “panGenerator”. Kati Hyyppä: Artist and educator from Finland, who likes to explore playful ways to connect with technology. Paweł Janicki: Independent media artist and producer. Klem Jankiewicz: Designer. She uses design tools for creation, exploration, and learning. A graduate of Creative Coding. Arkadiusz Klej: Coordinator of cultural projects, student at the School of Ideas. Gregory Kogos: Game designer and artist from Ukraine. Jakub Koźniewski: Interaction designer, co-founder of new media art collective “panGenerator”. Gosia Nierodzińska: Creative Strategist EMEA at Facebook. A graduate of Creative Coding. Karol Nowak: Landscape architect and designer. A graduate of Creative Coding. Niklas Roy: Installation artist and an educator from Berlin. He explores art, science and technology, often in the form of humorous installations and machines. Michał Sęk: Senior Art Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. A graduate of Creative Coding. Janek Simon: Artist. Author of interactive installations, video films, objects and artistic actions. Wojciech Stokowiec: Research Engineer at DeepMind.