Thanks for sharing the presentation, wish i had seen it in person. As a shameless plug, feel free to add a Studio Artist MSG (modular synthesized graphics) evolution editor slide next to the Avery one in a future presentation
But on a more serious note, you extensively get into the left vs right brain dichotomy, and # 3 of the Flash = Right brain slide says ‘write code’. Now do you really think that has anything to do with what you’re talking about when delving into right vs left brain thinking from the standpoint of creating visual art? And if so, for what percentage of the population?
I’m fascinated by what some visually oriented technical people are doing with things like Flash or processing these days, and the whole ‘make it yourself’ ethos is certainly a cool thing, and these kinds of tool abstractions help to make things easier for creating visual imagery without having to code every detail from scratch. But it’s still coding, and i don’t know that coding has anything to do with right brain visual artistic thinking when you get right down to it. Certainly not for 99% of my customers who would consider themselves visual artists but who would not consider themselves computer scientists or code hackers or technological anythings. It’s hard enough to get them to bend their artistic right brains around the concept of synthesizer style editing of artistic presets so that they can build their own tools to use for personal visual expression, the concept of writing actual code to create an image would literally drive them to pick up a gun and shoot themselves, their brains are just not built that way.
We kind of break the dichotomy in our user discussions down into left vs right brain days. On left brain days you build tools, on right brain days you do actual art work with the tools you created. And i kind of think that was the message of the earlier part of your talk. But i’m just not convinced that the concept of writing code to create art has any real meaning other than for a small set of technical geeks who’s brains are wired to write software. Myself certainly being one of them, i love your art from code site and what you are doing behind the scenes to create the images. And maybe for this select group of people there is some notion of left vs right brain coding, but even then i’m not so sure, good coding practice needs to be so methodical in it’s execution it seems very left brain centered to me. And i draw a huge distinction between what i do when i make one of my artistic tool features vs actually using it, they involve utilization of very different parts of my brain.
So please don’t take my discussion here as criticism, it’s more something i’m wrestling with myself i’d really like to understand better. Especially as i see tools like Processing evolve over time. Basically, does writing code have or will ever have any real relevance for most visual artists or just for some tech geeks who happen to also like to create visual art? I’m asking this question from the perspective of someone who writes software tools for artists.
John, I agree that writing code is totally a left brain activity, and that was really the whole focus of the first half of the talk – how to “code on the right side of the brain”, which I think is the key slide for that part of the discussion. It is definitely a challenge to stay “right brain focused” while coding and I talked about a lot of tips and tricks to help do that – at least things that work for me. Unfortunately, it was mostly verbal, not much made it into the slides themselves.
Flash 10 player will be viewd on “Android OS”, “new Palm OS”, “Symbian OS” and “Windows Mobile”.
I think Flash is still good for user-access and user-experience.
But I like your experimental try for Iphone and learn so much from your site. Please don’t stop and share your passion.
Thanks for sharing the presentation, wish i had seen it in person. As a shameless plug, feel free to add a Studio Artist MSG (modular synthesized graphics) evolution editor slide next to the Avery one in a future presentation
But on a more serious note, you extensively get into the left vs right brain dichotomy, and # 3 of the Flash = Right brain slide says ‘write code’. Now do you really think that has anything to do with what you’re talking about when delving into right vs left brain thinking from the standpoint of creating visual art? And if so, for what percentage of the population?
I’m fascinated by what some visually oriented technical people are doing with things like Flash or processing these days, and the whole ‘make it yourself’ ethos is certainly a cool thing, and these kinds of tool abstractions help to make things easier for creating visual imagery without having to code every detail from scratch. But it’s still coding, and i don’t know that coding has anything to do with right brain visual artistic thinking when you get right down to it. Certainly not for 99% of my customers who would consider themselves visual artists but who would not consider themselves computer scientists or code hackers or technological anythings. It’s hard enough to get them to bend their artistic right brains around the concept of synthesizer style editing of artistic presets so that they can build their own tools to use for personal visual expression, the concept of writing actual code to create an image would literally drive them to pick up a gun and shoot themselves, their brains are just not built that way.
We kind of break the dichotomy in our user discussions down into left vs right brain days. On left brain days you build tools, on right brain days you do actual art work with the tools you created. And i kind of think that was the message of the earlier part of your talk. But i’m just not convinced that the concept of writing code to create art has any real meaning other than for a small set of technical geeks who’s brains are wired to write software. Myself certainly being one of them, i love your art from code site and what you are doing behind the scenes to create the images. And maybe for this select group of people there is some notion of left vs right brain coding, but even then i’m not so sure, good coding practice needs to be so methodical in it’s execution it seems very left brain centered to me. And i draw a huge distinction between what i do when i make one of my artistic tool features vs actually using it, they involve utilization of very different parts of my brain.
So please don’t take my discussion here as criticism, it’s more something i’m wrestling with myself i’d really like to understand better. Especially as i see tools like Processing evolve over time. Basically, does writing code have or will ever have any real relevance for most visual artists or just for some tech geeks who happen to also like to create visual art? I’m asking this question from the perspective of someone who writes software tools for artists.
John, I agree that writing code is totally a left brain activity, and that was really the whole focus of the first half of the talk – how to “code on the right side of the brain”, which I think is the key slide for that part of the discussion. It is definitely a challenge to stay “right brain focused” while coding and I talked about a lot of tips and tricks to help do that – at least things that work for me. Unfortunately, it was mostly verbal, not much made it into the slides themselves.
Hello Keith:
I keep posting your information of Iphone and Flash. I am curious about that you just jumped on Iphone Development. But if you want wide perspective of Mobile Platform, please see this linkage.
http://www.intomobile.com/2009/02/16/adobe-flash-player-10-coming-to-android-symbian-windows-mobile-and-more.html
Flash 10 player will be viewd on “Android OS”, “new Palm OS”, “Symbian OS” and “Windows Mobile”.
I think Flash is still good for user-access and user-experience.
But I like your experimental try for Iphone and learn so much from your site. Please don’t stop and share your passion.
Thanks.
I can’t open the flash files. Adobe flash CS3 tells “Unexpected file format.”