1 Artistic Software: Processes and Products Letizia Jaccheri, Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

2 Structure Motivation Background: Software Goals: art and software Experience: art and software Future and challenge

3 Background Software engineering ( ) –Master “Software development environment” 1988 –PhD “Software process modeling” 1995 –The informatics era is over Cuore & Computer Mondadori Kjærlighet og Computer Multidisciplinary ( ) –Health, military, biology, bank, schools,... –Art!

4 Computer science/engineering Programming: Constant, variable, if, then, else, while, for, compilation unit, library, C, C++, Java, Python, procedure, algorithm, task, thread (ex. processing) operating system, database Software engineering: Object oriented programming and design, testing, software process, software architecture, empirical software engineering, requirements, design, software architecture, quality, open source software AI: artificial intelligence Hardware: CPU, RAM, ROM, BIOS, buses, power supply,... (ex. arduino)

5 Software: Creativity and constraints Software development –Creativity: code and fix / free software –Constraints: WaterFall model Research –Creativity: good ideas –Constraints: Research method, middle term evaluation, state of the art, literature review

6 Software: do and observe/write Software development –Do: programming –Observe: document Research –Do: Software design –Observe: Empirical software engineering –... Action Research

7 Software: models and products Software –The models are the products (compilation) Hw –Physical construction of components Architecture –...

8 Goals Explore the way the interaction between software technology and art can also be beneficial for the software technologists I was told that “software is intangible”... Through art we want to sense software by hearing, touching, and seeing. We want to engage in software dialogs.

9 Experience (art - software) RIK (Rom IKT Kropp project film 2002) Experts in team –2004 (IT - art) 2005 (technology - art) 2006 (software art) Blog letiziajaccheri.splinder.com letiziajaccheri.motime.com Cooperation with –TEKS (board) Trondheim electronic art center –Oyvind Brandsegg –Falanx / ARM / Mario Blazevic –Åsmund Gamlesæter (lysvegg)

10 Experience Course software art: products and processes Project and master students – Thor Arne S. and Audun – Nicolas M. 2 Rune F. 3 Thibault and Maximo PhD and PostDoc –2006 PhD Salahuddin Ammed (from 25.09) –2007 PostDoc Anna Trifonova (from late 2006)

11 Literature (a start) (1) Aestetic Computing, edited by Paul Fishwick, Leonardo Books, ISBN: X. Chapter 1, An Introduction to Aesthetic Computing, Paul Fishwick, 25 pages. (2) Craig Harris. Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in- Residence Program, Leonardo Books, 1999, ISBN: An Archeology of Sound: An Anthropology od Communication, Paul De Marinis, pages (3) Rachel Greene. Internet Art. Thames and Hudson, World of Art, June ISBN: Introduction pages , Chapter 2, Isolating the Elements, pages (4) Sally Yeates Sedelow. The Computer in the Humanities and Fine Arts. ACM Comput. Surv., 2(2): , 1970.

12 Research questions Analysis/synthesis –Pattern recognition and analysis in art architecture, music, literature –Construction or synthesis Representation (Sedelow70)

13 Research questions Aural or auditory –Music is the art form which has been most amenable to be computer-aided Visual Tactile (Seddelow70)

14 Research question Data storage: Communication between the humanist and computer scientist may well be easier as to data representation and input than as to internal data storage and manipulation. In fact computer- aided tasks undertaken by humanists require the same range of conceptual models and storage structures as do computer-aided projects in other disciplines: arrays, lists, trees,..., and matrices. But for the humanist who is quite comfortable with the notion of a table of words may be quite baffled by the word array in a software context, and the computer scientist may be equally put off by the word style, or by the words such as tone and texture associated with it (Seddelow70)

15 Research questions Representing programs and data structures with specific notations Incorporate artistic methods in computer science activities Improving the emotional and cultural interaction with the computer (Fishwick) Aesthetic being the philosophy of art Art and creativity Computer science –ACM and IEEE –Discrete mathematics Ars electronica 2003 computer code as raw material for art

16 Research question Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in- Residence Program (Harris)

17 Research questions How computers and internet have influenced art –Net.art –The importance of critique – –Collective projects –Browser art –Authorship –Avatar (Greene)

18 Preliminary lessons learnt Software architecture of the algorithmic music system ImproSculpt “Eventually frustrated with the amount of “collateral” work associated with further development of the system, Brandsegg decided to give up developing the old source code any further, and rather start with a new and more structured approach. This is where our project met his.”

19 Software architecture Structure and quality attributes –Performance (*) –Modifiability (*) –Availability (*) –Usability –Security –Testability Quality tactics

20 An architecture... Is shaped by some collection of functional, quality, and business requirements. We call these shaping requirements architectural drivers

21 Preliminary lessons learnt Provided that software has influenced algorithmic composition, the general research question in this work is: –“how does algorithmic composition constrain and shape software?” –“which qualities will software for algorithmic composition have?” The concrete goal of this project is – to design and implement and improved software architecture of the algorithmic composition system Improsculpt. Through participation to this development project, the candidates will get insights in the system as well as empirical data which can be used to answer the research questions

22 Preliminary lessons learnt Motivation: (some) students love to work with Improsculpt and artists in general Creativity and constraints Do and observe Programs and models

23 Future work Sacco software art creativity community openess. Proposal submitted to NFR (2 PhD + 1 post Doc) with Falanx/Arm Choose/develop one software system at IDI Work for artists as with Improsculpt

24 Do - observe Challenges ahead “One of the challenges with this project has been finding a balance between devoting time to our research goal and working towards the concrete software goals. The two sets of goals have been, if not contradictory, then at least complementary. Our research goal has been observing how architecture is shaped by this kind of software, while the more concrete project goal has been to improve the software itself.”