Show HN: Art as a Service: F(x) → [Object Art]
theblackbox.ca
theblackbox.ca
You make some claims about the "divide" between art and engineering. By inserting yourself as a mediator between these two fields, do you think you are reconciling these worlds? Because to me it seems like you are capitalizing on this difference instead of actually attempting to stitch the rift together. By manipulating liminal markets, you are closely mimicking the behavior of tech startups. Is this in the interest of your art, or just your practice?
I'm not reconciling any divides, if anything I'm drawing a arbitrary line in the sand when high tide is approaching. Inflammatory at best. What I do know is collage using textbooks, Model M keycaps, square bracket forms and pornography is fun and holds meaning. My engineering colleagues can understand the underlying language more clearly. Where does that come from? But there is a different logging mechanism in the world now that just makes the question `createArt(arg1, arg2) painting` exist, it's an option over doing it yourself but you're the curator. My friends work with IoT devices and collect some fun data, now they can pass it off to me pragmatically.
A few years of HN got to me. But it is modelled after other SASS startups, the model works and I don't have to invent the infrastructure, that's what other services are for (boxes all the way down). But BlackBox is a service, and operates as such. I'm undecided on if this a credit to the work, but it damn well is a property. It's not the first time I've reached for a similar method of expression though. A few years back I created http://projectexas.appspot.com (oh god it's a broken mess) just to showcase/contrast that data. Perhaps this is a extension of that mindset? Thank you for pointing that out, I had not actively noticed! But is it viable? That act of capitalization funds the whole show after all. Operating entirely in the interest of sustaining the practice and possibly finding a market. That's a comment on startup/capitalist culture if I've ever seen one. A few projects have had publicly available APIs [1], but I'm not sure something like this exists.
Seriously though, try asking someone overtly to send you logs/resources, It's kind of hard. I really just want some newspaper clippings and posters from the insides of servers. I really want to be called, to be a funnel for curated data another side effect of a giant mechanism. And if you're reading on Hacker News, there's a good chance you can understand that desire. And I want to talk to you via walls.
Non native English speaker here who found the introductory lines on the website very confusing.
I'm trying gauging if there is a market for Artworks from a Engineering perspective. It's near and dear to me, but the money just doesn't seem there, support the Arts and all that.
The project is trying to create meaningful Art (paintings) for a technical minded audience. To do this we expose an API for submissions and have a simple web flow for submissions. The content of these submissions is arbitrary, I use them like one would use posters in a collage[1]. As fragments of the whole.
There are no examples of my work, nor will there be. It's up to you to jump in. For that, we have the docs.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage [edit: docs]
Are those painting being returned as a digital work or are you talking about actual paintings?
I am trying with Get Started, it is supposed to teach me how to start using the API, I'm presented with only a choice "Oil Paintings". If I click on it, I am then presented a form which asks me to input "some text", upload some images, and type in "some links".
I then go on clicking, thinking that this is just an example of a subset of the API. Instead I am presented with a price indicator slider. I guess the sense of it is "tell me how much you want to pay" but I have seen no example of what the API does and honestly at that point I stopped investigating because I am not interested anymore. This must not have been the part of the website I was looking for.
I go back and see "programmable art". I am not sure again. If the works are being done by a machine using functional programming (where given a parameter the result is the same) why there can't be no examples???
Then my eyes are caught by "Handcrafted Artisanal Emoji", again it's confusing if this stuff is man-made or machine-made and it just feels this has been shoved in the page just as a different fallback product.
Everything really seems unconnected and there is not one clear direction.
Also, you might be the next Victor Hugo, but today you are not that or are not yet known by that, so simply saying "hey trust me, you will like this" it is not enough.
The API docs are at http://theblackbox.ca/api (in the navbar, and two buttons on the homepage), the _rest of the site_ is a simple form based method to interact with the project. The API is just the "ideal" way of using BlackBox, but it is not the main focus.
These are physical oil paintings [Statement: "Blackbox transforms arbitrary data into physical objects. That's it.", Oil paintings can't be digital, "Talking via Walls"], that take days of effort to put together and a few weeks to dry plus shipping time. This is not a API that returns imagery, it's an API that puzzles over inputs, smokes a bunch of cigarettes and ships a tube with canvas to your door! The API is only for longer running processes. For example, you have a pile of code, IRC logs and photographs it would be better to ZIP them up and upload them through the single-use mechanism. A good use of the API would be a IRC bot that uploads messages off a trigger ["lol" after a message or something] and then finalizes the painting on some other trigger ["!paintitblack"]. The API is meant for piece by piece submissions.
As far as identity goes, visual styles are extremely easy to map to an artist, throwing examples on there is the equivalent of using my real name. I'm not $NAME, making paintings using the visual imagery that devs can understand, painting on stripped apart CRTs and looping videos instead of a static underpainting, trying to move dead Cubism towards continuous methods or trying to create a work to be puzzled over and interpreted. I'm not $NAME with a body of work and documentation, a CV and BFA whose process and history can be understood. I'm a metaphor for/am an opaque mechanism/abstraction with inputs and outputs.
I'm assuming the identity of a piece of infrastructure, an anonymous construct, a neutral mask. BlackBox is a performance piece, that satisfies the Interface for a API, while providing a space (between creator/painter) for exploration of new space (read: Your servers). Blackbox collects materials for collage in a space where corporeal beings cannot! If I simply wanted collage materials, I would wander and collect them. But I want an equivalent in terms of data fragments (logs, requests, error messages, anything!), captured from your infrastructure, preferably in transit.
If I am $NAME, this turns into a way to pragmatically commission my works (although, it currently does satisfy these criterion) and that is just a little less then this project aims for. Collage is investigation.
Examples were going to be self-documenting via a nice unique hashtag on a card allowing the viewer to choose if this is private conversation or public status symbol? A few of these floating around could give you an idea. At the end of the project the full set of my documentation is released and my name, etc.
Although it doesn't really matter, because no one has taken the first interaction. So does anyone even want developer orientated Art? The capitalist answer is No.
I feel it's more coherent then jodi.org, but just barely.
[edit: spelling]
That said, I've been toying with a definition recently, that "art is something that should be considered more deeply." I like this definition because it foregrounds (instead of trying to dodge) the various agencies and tensions involved.
For me Art is the act of expression. To poets, the reading. To painters, painting. To hackers, hacking. The object is simply a object left over documenting the process (although utmost attention is provided to the object during the act).
Kitsch I would define as engaging that creation mechanism with substandard intent. Maybe to copy a photograph with paint, or just muck about on a canvas because there is an hour to kill. When the focus is the documentation, it becomes programming for programmings sake, and loses the artistic merit.
At least, through my eyes.
Edit: Perhaps the box is the art and the outputs are commentary on Art as a Commodity?
Have these machines formalized myself? I am creating humanistic sincere programs?
What's in the box? That's an entire lives work of questions, flesh blood and tabstop=2?
Text, Images, Resources, Whatever. It's a wrapper for turning arbitrary ideas/messages/fragments/code/etc into oil paints. The works are shipped out after drying to any specifications.
So, the artist is making an API where your role as the requester is in providing data that the artist will use as inspiration to create and send an oil painting within your budget.