Sean Cuttlefish's Blog

Reflections on Teaching Art and Technology in China

Sean Clark — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 22:49:05 GMT

I'm back from my latest month (my fifth in total) of teaching at Guangdong University of Technology School of Art and Design in China. Since it was the last session in this contract (I'll probably sign up to do more). I thought it was time for some reflection.

When I did the first session in April 2017 I really didn't know what to expect. I was asked to teach "creative programming" to people who had not programmed before. My initial concerns were not just with programming languages to use but also with the human ones. How would the workshop work with people who I didn't share a first language with? I also had a practical concern that I would have problems being behind the "Great Firewall of China" since I use a lot of internet resources. Finally, I wondered about my approach of teaching technical subjects through artistic projects. Would this work in China?

In terms of human language, yes, the language difference has at times be problematic. However, English is widely taught in China and the University provided student translators. Plus, translator apps are getting better and can really help in some situations. Ultimately, while language differences can slow things down, it has not really proven to be problem. Eventually the message gets through.

However, in terms of computer language it is definitely harder for people to learn to program using English command-based language when their first language is Chinese! When teaching Arduino coding I have struggled to get more than a few students beyond the copy-and-paste stage. Most of the problems are to do with typing and syntax, not the concepts. Luckily, visual programming environments such as Scratch and BBC Micro:bit Blocks and be easily switched between English and Chinese and I have found that Chinese students can make good progress with both of these. I always remind the students that, despite appearances, both of these are real programming environments that are not just for children.

The Great Firewall of China is an interesting one. The fact is that some valuable teaching resources are on sites that you can't get to in China. The inability to directly access YouTube and other Google sites is particularly problematic at times. However, it is also the case that everyone knows how to use a VPN to overcome these restrictions! I thought this would be something of a hush-hush topic, but if something is not available then the VPN goes on and people just access it through one of those.

I'm happy to say that arts-led teaching approach seems to go down well. I have progressively brought in more and more creative topcis over the five one-month workshops. This includes using examples of early computer art as inspiration for programming tasks, getting students to recreate my own hardware-based digital artworks in Arduino, and basing all the tasks during one of the months around Guangcai porcelain.

The overall experience has been a positive one, with some really good work being produced by the Chinese students. As is the case anywhere some students are more motivated than others but when they are keen on the workshops Chinese students work particularly hard and can be very productive.

Details of the workshops and exhibitions - with pictures and supporting documents - can be found at http://interactdigitalarts.uk/fe-artlab. Contact me if you have any questions about the workshop programme so far.

artThings at Create-a-con 2019

Sean Clark — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 13:39:26 GMT

Saturday 9th March saw Leicester's regular Create-a-con event at the LCB Depot. Among the exhibitors were Leicester Hackspace, R10 Music Collective and Interact Digital Arts. I was showing off some work in progress made using artThings technology. There was the large "LOL" light piece in the LCD Depot window, the connected "Colloquy" 3D printed works I last showed at In The Dark and some new work that uses artThings to allow you to use your mobile phone as a controller for a big-screen video game.

This last piece is based around technology I have developed to allow people to interact with digital artworks via a mobile device. For a project to help celebrate 50 years since the first moon landing, it's being adapted to allow you to control video games on large public screens. The idea is that you scan a QR code, or enter a short web address, and then get to control old-school video games from your mobile.

It's still work-in-progress, but it was very useful to be able to test the technology out with live users. In general it performed well. Even my simple game grew a crowd! I look forward to see what happens when we give the technology to *real* games developers!

See pictures from the event at https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157703978179732

East Meets West: Innovation Connections

Sean Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 23:30:44 GMT

I've finally completed the documentation for the East Meets West: Innovation connections exhibition that I co-curated in Guangzhou, China in November 2018. The updated web page contains information about the artworks shown together with a PDF of the exhibition catalogue and pictures of the workshops and the exhibition itself.

http://interactdigitalarts.uk/innovationconnections

Lots of Lights - "LOL"

Sean Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 22:08:42 GMT

Last year I was asked to produce a lighting display for the main cafe window at the LCB Depot in Leicester to be installed throughout December. After working through a number of ideas I settled on something that I call Lots of Lights, or "LOL". LOL consists of 20 internet-connected micro-controllers, each connected to a string of 50 bright LED lights. The resulting 1,000 LEDs can be made to play patterns, such as fades and chases, via an associated web application.

The lights were installed in the LCB cafe window to coincide with the Interact'18 exhibition and remained live for around six weeks.

As well as being an interesting work in its own right, the installation allowed me to test my latest artThings lighting technology. The controller I used for each light string contained a small device called a Wemos D1 - something I use quite a bit in my "connected" artworks. The D1 is small and cheap (as low as £1.50 each if you buy from China) and can be combined with a voltage regulator to create a small unit that can power and control the 50 LED "Neopixels" I often use.

While I knew this technology worked in the studio, what I didn't know for sure was how it would perform when used in large numbers and for a long period of time. A previous experiment had shown me that not all WiFi routers let 20 devices connect to their WiFi network at the same time. I now use a TP-Link AC750 that can support up to 64 simultaneous devices (32 on each band). But would there be any additional problems?

The initial installation went well. The lights were bright and the web app controller worked perfectly - simply scan a QR code and the controller would pop up on the user's mobile phone and they could trigger patterns. However, after a couple of days some of the LED strings would reset. Problems like this can be hard to diagnose and it took many days to get to the root of the problem. It turned out that the Adafruit Neopixel and Adafruit MQTT software libraries I was using did not like working together. After a couple of days they would cause the micro-controller to run out of memory and crash, leading to a device reset.

I found that by using a different lighting software library - in this case FastLED rather than Neopixel - this problem went away and the micro-controllers would run for weeks without any problems. Luckily I only had to update the software on the D1s (albeit 20 of them) and not change the hardware. However, it did remind me the importance of testing your code when installing a project like this. What works in the studio may not work the same way in a live environment.

Pictures of LOL, plus the workshop held on Saturday 12th January can be found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157705953639835. Please contact me if you want to know more about the project.

Interact'18 Exhibition

Sean Clark — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 23:25:53 GMT

The Interact'18 exhibition took place between 7th and 21st December 2018 at the LCB Depot Lightbox gallery. The exhibition featured work by digital artists associated with Leicester - James Chantry, Andrew Johnston, Thierry Miquel, Joe Moran, Ernest Edmonds, Fabrizio Poltonieri, Anoushka Goodwin, Leila Houston, Michele Witthaus & Paul Rudman, Yi Ji, Alice Tuppen-Corps, Dave Everitt & Fania Raczinski, Peter Flint, Askokkumar Mistry and myself.

The aims of the exhibition were, first, show the wide range of digital artwork produced in the city and, second, to introduce artists who may not have met before to each other. Leicester is a relatively small city, but it surprising how often I find people working in similar ways who have not met before. I think it achieved both of these goals.

The online catalogue for the exhibition can be found at: http://interactdigitalarts.uk/interact18

Pictures from the event can be found at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157704389674814

An output from the exhibition is the Leicester Digital Artists Facebook group that will be promoting further opportunities for Leicester digital artists to show their work.

In The Dark @ The Cello Factory

Sean Clark — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 19:44:49 GMT

Over the last week I've spent quite a bit of time in London at the In the Dark exhibition at the Cello Factory in London. The exhibition was curated by the arts group Genetic Moo and supported by The London Group and the Computer Arts Society. Genetic Moo's aim for the exhibition was to literally hold the exhibition 'in the dark', with the only light in the gallery coming from the artworks themselves.

My contribution to the show was a network of connected artworks in the form of screen-based and light works. The five individual pieces connected to each other via WiFi and exchanged colours as they ran. I gave a short talk about the work and found that there was quite a bit of interest.

A set of pictures from the exhibition can be found on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/seancuttlefish/albums/72157677885498078

With a video walkthrough on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABNS9d2GJWE

CAS50 Exhibition Catalogue

Sean Clark — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 15:40:14 GMT

The catalogue for the Computer Arts Society 50th anniversary exhibition is now available for order from the Interact Digital Arts shop. The catalogue includes information about the artworks in the exhibition, together with pictures of the Leicester and Brighton showings.

This is Interact's first "official" publication with an ISBN code. We think it looks great and we will be producing more catalogues and similar publications over the coming year if the self-publishing model works.

If you can, please support us by purchasing one of the limited edition print copies. The PDF will be made available for free download at some point in the future.

Purchase from here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/616573763/cas50-exhibition-catalogue.

CAS50 Exhibition in Brighton

Sean Clark — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 17:56:00 GMT

Between the 13th and 23rd September 2018 the Computer Arts Society's CAS50 Exhibition was on display at Phoenix in Brighton. The opening of the exhibition took place on the Thursday night at the same time as the Lumen Prize exhibition in the same venue, and both were part of the launch of the annual Brighton Digital Festival. It was a very well-attended launch, with lots of people expressing interest in the combination of historical work on show as part of CAS50 and the contemporary work in the Lumen show.

Amongst the earliest work on display in the CAS50 show was a collection of computer printouts from Roger Saunders, who began studying in Brighton almost exactly 50 years ago this month. His work, plus all the others in the show, can bee seen on the CAS50 website at http://www.computer-arts-society.com/cas50.

The CAS50 collection is still growing and we have a number of possible exhibitions lined-up for 2019. Keep an eye on the Computer Arts Society Facebook Group for the latest news. Pictures from the previous exhibitions can also be seen on the CAS50 website.

27 Exhibition @ Gallery Without Walls

Sean Clark — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 17:03:27 GMT

My latest collection of computer generated artworks, called "27", was premiered at the LCB Depot as part of the Gallery Without Walls project on Saturday. This represents the coming together of two projects.

Firstly, the exhibition itself is the completion of a work cycle that started with two works that were part of the Resonance exhibition with Esther Rolinson in Leicester last December, then became part of the East Meets West exhibition in Guangzhou, China in April and is now a stand-alone exhibition in its own right.

27 is based around my self-organising visual systems. The main building blocks of the piece are groups of three connected grids that grow together by exchanging colours and sorting them according to pre-defined rules. After the grids have been running for a while I capture an image and then combine the images to form larger images. These larger images are then arranged according to additional rules.

The result is a system of patterns-within-patterns where the "parts" make "wholes" that then become parts in larger wholes and so on. In the case of this exhibition nine locations around Leicester each have three images, which are each composed of three connected grids, which are each composed of 25 colours.

The locations selected to show the work are part of Gallery Without Walls. This is a project I've been working on with Graff.io Arts for over a year now. We have been building a network of venues around Leicester where we can show artists' work as part of "distributed exhibitions". 27 is the third show we've put together, hence my exhibition is also known as GWW03.

It's great when two projects meet like this. It's also very satisfying for me to complete this creative project in this way. Graff.io Arts are expert printers and the work looks excellent. It will be popping up at the various venues around Leicester shortly.

For more information visit http://gallerywithoutwalls.uk/gww03.

The work will be on display until the end of August, when GWW04 will take over. More details on this to follow.

Pixel Art Workshop

Sean Clark — Sun, 27 May 2018 22:43:13 GMT

Today I ran a PixelArt workshop as part of the Spark Festival at Phoenix in Leicester. The main purpose of the workshop was to have some fun, but it is also part of a project I have been working on. The idea is to create a system for creating and exchanging 16 x 16 pixel images via an app and have them displayed on LED panels. You can see the results of todays workshop here, but also keep an eye out for future developments.

CAS50 Exhibition Opening

Sean Clark — Fri, 25 May 2018 12:11:41 GMT

Wednesday night was the opening of the CAS50: Fifty Years of the Computer Arts Society exhibition at the LCB Lightbox Gallery in Leicester. The exhibition features work by 12 internationally recognised computer artists who have been associated with the society over the years.

Eight of the exhibitors attended the exhibition, together with many other CAS members and interested people. The Guest of Honour was George Mallen, one of the three original founders of the Computer Arts Society in 1968.

The exhibition is on until the 15th June. Opening times can be found on the exhibition web site at http://interactdigitalarts.uk/cas50. Photographs from the opening can be found on Flickr here.

For more information about the Computer Arts Society visit http://computer-arts-society.com/.

Creative Connections Exhibition in China

Sean Clark — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 08:14:00 GMT

Tonight is the opening of the Creative Connections: East meets West exhibition at Guangdong University in southern China. It represents the first major public output of my activities at the University since I began teaching at GDUT in April 2017.

The exhibition takes place at the 729 Art Cafe on the Dongfeng Road campus of GDUT in Guangzhou. It features work by artists from De Montfort University in Leicester, UK with further contributions from artists and designers from Guangzhou. Importantly, it also has work by some of the students involved in my teaching.

Working in China can be a bit confusing and chaotic at times. But I have found it ultimately very rewarding. I think that this exhibition illustrates this. The work from both the UK and Chinese sides is of high-quality and I think bringing it together will ultimately lead to new collaborations between the exhibitors.

See the exhibition web page (http://interactdigitalarts.uk/creativeconnections) for more details, the exhibition catalogue and photographs.

Archive Update

Sean Clark — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 16:30:30 GMT

I've been hosting my own websites since October 1993 - that'll be for an astonishing 25 years this year. Over this time I've built up a pretty extensive on-line archive of my creative activities that includes copies of websites, pictures, videos, software and so on.

My plan for the future is to turn this archive in to something of an annotated record of early "digital culture" (from my personal perspective). Perhaps with reflections and eventually interviews with the people I have worked with over the years. I've been making some progress towards this, with the Cyberculture exhibition in summer 2017 being the first public outing.

You might think that "preserving" digital materials is easy. After all, unlike physical objects you don't need much space to store them, and you can make as many copies as you like. However, this is not necessarily the case.

Websites can stop working due to changes in how the web works. Plug-ins change, older video formats no longer work and links break. Also, old software may not run on modern computers and CD-ROMs, videos and other physical media my no-longer be readable. For this reason I regularly check through my on-line archive and have build up a collection of old computers to run early software.

For artists in particular there's also a very practical consideration. If (like me) you think that reflection is a vital part of the creative process and you don't document your activities (and update your archive regularly) you will end up not updating it at all. Forgetting to document is a perpetual problem, and just taking a few pictures on your phone is rarely enough.

I've just finished this year's review. Pictures have been uploaded to Flickr and sorted, web pages have been updated and I've run through old sites looking for broken links. Everything seems in good shape. I just wish I could say the same for those shelves of non-digital things currently taking up shelf space in my studio!

If you want to have a look at my web archive then visit http://interactdigitalarts.uk/archive. Oh, and not forgetting http://theartofcrass.uk, http://seanclark.me.uk and http://nemeton.com...

Resonance Exhibition Opening

Sean Clark — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 17:40:03 GMT

The Resonance exhibition of work by myself and Esther Rolinson is now open at the LCB Depot in Leicester. It runs until Friday 22nd December, with the last night coinciding with the famous Canteen street food event at LCB.

I'm very pleased with the exhibition. I think it is a coherent presentation of work by two artists who work in very different ways, but have shared underlying interests. Both Esther and myself are interested in "systems" and you can see this interest expressed throughout the work in the exhibition.

I am particularly happy with my new digital pieces. Both the larger and smaller framed LCD screens look really smart and build on the work I have done before on hiding the technology I use as much as possible. These new frames are down to local woodworker Steve Lynch who laser cut, assembled and painted the screen mounts.

Expect to see the framing of my work to develop more over the coming year.

You can find photographs from the exhibition opening at http://interactdigitalarts.uk/resonance.

Resonance: Esther Rolinson and Sean Clark Exhibition

Sean Clark — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 16:22:15 GMT

On the 6th December at the LCB Depot in Leicester atwe will be opening an exhibition of new work by Esther Rolinson and myself. This exhibition will be an opportunity for both of us to show some of our new individual work, as well as the collaborative pieces we are currently working on.

It will be the first time that we have exhibited together in this way and is the first time we have shown joint work in my creative hometown of Leicester. The exhibition will open around 6pm and continue until 9pm, with talks between 7pm and 8pm. There will, of course, be drinks.

If you want to come along, it is free, then see the details on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/events/350194088739601/) or the exhibition web page at http://interactdigitalarts.uk/resonance.

The KLF Welcome Us To The Dark Ages

Sean Clark — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 19:49:16 GMT

After a 23 year absence Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond aka The KLF, The JAMs, K Foundation etc. returned with a three day event in Liverpool called Welcome to the Dark Ages. The 400 of us with tickets reflected on the past (why did they burn a million quid?), explored the present (we were all given pages of their new book to look after. I am custodian of page 281) and were introduced to the future (the KLF are now funeral directors).

It was an amazing spectacle to be involved in. It was also one that will take a while to sink in. So, rather than write about it in detail I am simply sharing the media I captured during the event - video and photographs. At some point I will write a post about it on my blog. I've also added links to press articles and web pages about the event.

I could see that lots of people were recording things over the three days. I think we should collate it and make a film to document the event. Maybe after a suitable break to allow reflection? If you like the idea please get in touch.

You can find my video and pictures of the event all in one place here, or on YouTube and Flickr.

REND386 World

Sean Clark — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 21:45:48 GMT

As part of the Cyberculture exhibition in Leicester I've launched my first Google Cardboard Virtual Reality app. REND386 World takes classic VR "worlds" from the 1990s and presents them for Cardboard v2. Currently it is only on Android, but iOS, Oculus and Vive versions will be coming soon. Download it for free now from the Google Play Store. Search for "REND386 World" or follow the link to http://interactdigitalarts.uk/rend386.

Cyberculture Pt3: 25 Years Later

Sean Clark — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 21:07:58 GMT

Twenty five years on and the era of 'cyberculture' seems like a long time ago. The internet (no capital 'I' any more) is now an integral part of our lives, Virtual Reality less so, predictions of the end of national borders havn't really happened, but we do have Facebook and social media, which are sort of borderless. Connectivity is truly ubiquitous and we have faster internet in our pockets that we every imagined possible in the 1990s. In fact, smartphones encapsulate much of what we imagines the internet could be.

When thinking about those times I was struck by the fact that 25 years means that an entire generation has grown up taking the Internet for granted. They probably can't imagine that there was a time without it, nor do they realise that there was a time when the rules were up for grabs. For those of us who were around I'm sure memories are fading and we may not realise how important those times were.

It was for these reasons that I thought it was time to start cataloging my collection of materials from the era and looking for opportunities to exhibited. The first outcome of this work are what I am now calling the "Nemeton Archive" at nemeton.com. This collects all of my online materials from the early 1990, the websites for The Shamen and other early websites, lists of books and videos and so on.

The second is the exhibition "Cyberculture: The Beginning of the Modern World" at The LCB Depot in Leicester. This will run until 17th June 2017 and culminates with an all-date event of music, performance, videos, talks, Virtual Reality art by William Latham and a rare show by the Oscillate Sound System and Higher Intelligence Agency.

See http://interactdigitalarts.uk/cyberculture for details.

Hopefully this will lead to more activities in the future. If you have any materials to contribute to the archive please let me know. Follow me on Facebook for Twitter for future news.

Cyberculture Pt2: ...and the Birth of Cyberculture

Sean Clark — Sun, 21 May 2017 18:10:21 GMT

The rise of the Internet was not just about technology. For many people it was part of a vision that saw digital technology as having the potential to create a new world without national borders or governments, where all information would be free and where human consciousness would be lifted to a new level. The Internet was a new electronic frontier, a place they called "Cyberspace".

People interested in this vision met online in places such as the The WELL (established in 1985) and at night clubs like Cyberseed and Megatripolis in London (1993). Their ideas mixed with those from previous counter-culture movements and new figureheads emerged. John Perry Barlow from the Grateful Dead formed the Electronic Frontier Foundation (1990) to protect online rights, R U Series published Mondo 2000, essential reading for all would-be cyberpunks. Bruce Sterling wrote about The Hacker Crackdown (1993). Fans of electronic music, computer graphics and Virtual Reality became involved and by 1993 "Cyberculture" was fully formed and ready to make use of the newly-public Internet and World Wide Web.

For me it meant using my Internet skills for more than University research. From running cybercaffs at the Oscillate club in Birmingham, homebrew VR at Megatripolis, websites and live events for The Shamen and other bands, writing for the new Internet press, to touring as a VJ at gigs and festivals.

But almost 25 years later does any of this matter?

http://interactdigitalarts.uk/cyberculture

Cyberculture Pt1: The Rapid Rise of the Internet...

Sean Clark — Sun, 21 May 2017 16:08:34 GMT

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I was a researcher at Loughborough University specialising in "co-operative computing". It was interesting work and allowed me to develop expertise in use of "IP networks" well before they became available to the general public in the UK.

Initially, in 1989, my internet (lowercase 'i') was limited to accessing computers on the University campus. It was useful for "Talk", email, file transfer and X Windows, but was not much like the service we have today. It was possible to connect to the global Internet (uppercase 'I'), but this was done via a single 9.6kbps gateway that connected the UK academic network to the US. So, if I wanted to get a document from the 'Net I would first have to search through the index of "anonymous FTP" services for its location, then request the file from the server, the request would be queued, then downloaded from the US to a computer in London, where I would use the UK's X.25 network to transfer it to my own computer.

Then, in 1991, the UK's academic network moved over to using IP (first as well as, then instead of, X.25) and all of the things I had been doing locally could be done globally. The transatlantic link got a boost too and the result was amazing - I could download a document from the US with a single click! IP (which if you don't know stands for "Internet Protocol") glued everything together so seamlessly that the same technology you used to share files, or send messages, between two computers in the research lab could be used to do the same between two computers anywhere in the world. It was also very flexible, and new IP-based services arrived almost weekly and I would experiment with them all - anonymous FTP, Usenet, Gopher, WAIS, CUSeeMe, and so on.

Everything was still something of a well-kept secret though - in fact I remember being mocked by friends for having a "nerdy" email address on my business card. Most Internet users were academics, or people from computer companies or multinationals, and home Internet access was rare. I was able to dial-in to the University from my Mac SE at home, but most people didn't think they were missing anything. This was all about to change with the arrival of two things.

The first in 1992 was tenner-a-month home Internet access using dial-up from Demon Internet. This made home Internet use a reality, and kept it affordable. The second was the release of NCSA Moasic in early 1993. This gave the Internet a simple user interface via the World Wide Web. Plus, Demon gave you some "web space" to host your own documents.

The bits were in place and the Internet was ready to go.

http://interactdigitalarts.uk/cyberculture