The blogger

Hello, I forgot to introduce myself: I'm Italo Travenzoli. I'm brazilian and I live in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. I'm 26 years old and I have a bachelor's degree in Visual Arts, with specialization in animation, but I definitely hate being called "artist" or animator.
I'm more like an interactive designer. I make things with functionality, purposes, very strict goals and, certainly, interactivity.
I'm self taught in programming. I started with Processing. Now, I work producing interactive installations for museums, games and apps.
I'm self taught in almost everything I know today, including English.
I'm really into interactivity now. Everything I made the last year was interactive.
Now I'm preparing to start a master's degree -in art... oh god why...- and my project will be about computer vision and interactivity.
Next year, this blog certainly will gravitate toward computer vision in creative coding. I promisse I'll share all I discover about this subject.
That's It. I hope you are enjoying this blog.

Homo Prostheticus

The human being is a tool maker. That's because the body's physical limits were never enough to achieve the limitless ambitions of the mind. The human body of today is almost the same of thousand of years, but the mind - of the true thinkers - were and always will be up to date.
Very early in human history, men were aware of the limitation of the body and learned to cheat its limits, first with rocks and bones, now with microprocessors. There is a concept of obsolete body proposed by Stelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) in which human body limits can be extended by technology.
Along thousand of years, humans designed tools, mechanisms and gizmos that made what human hands and legs couldn't. Now, they're extensions of the core of the human existence: the brain.
Tablets, phones, computers in general are, more than ever, at the reach of the hands, because society imposes to humans more memory, more speed and more connection. People are delegating responsibilities of the brain, mostly the redundant ones, for instance, the abilities that machines do better and quickly, and concentrating on the flaws of them, like creativity, discernment and judgement.  Machines are pretty much like prosthetics for redundant (and limited) functions of the brain.  Why to do mental calculation if you have a calculator always near?
The baby boomers and the X generation are learning to delegate brain functions. The "Y" generation is addicted to it and next generations will be dependent of it. I think we couldn't escape of this "curse" of the prosthetization of mind and body (if this duality exists).

 

Languages and compilers

I see music as a kind of low level programmation language for souls. With abstract sintax, music penetrates the soul and makes deep impressions in the mind and emotion of sensitive people, which are are like perfect systems where the programs could operate with minimal loss.
One of the best "programmers" of all time was Bach. His works was profoundly mathematical, but extremely effective. And one of the best "compilers" was Glenn Gould, who ran flawlessly the language of Bach.

Posts

From today, i'll avoid large texts and useless images because I want to focus on content.

If nobody noticed, I have the habit of rewrite my old posts to improve them. So, the entire blog is under constant changes.

And if, by chance, nobody noticed, I'm Brazilian. I am self taught in English, so some things I write may be wrong. If you want to correct me, I'd appreciate it! Grammar Nazis, come at me bros!

I'll try to post everyday, but, if I don't, keep an eye on twitter (@creativec0d1ng). There I'll tweet news and important links.

Thanks for being here!

Art vs artistic exercise

Strictly speaking, art is an evolving language. However, in general, what really happens is that art is a title that some works receive from critics and audience.
Artistic exercise is the act of making works using artistic language without a urge to push art to the next level, just as a means of expression. With the popularization of the expressive technologies, anyone can make artistic exercise without formal artistic background. There are millions of blogs, photos, movies, visual works, and there are several initiatives, like applications or even tools like Processing and OpenFrameworks that makes life easier for anyone who wants to express themselves.
If someone makes visuals for a comercial product, or uses artistic language unpretentiously just to express himself, many can label those work as art, but, actually, it's artistic exercise.
Before the age of technical reproducibility of artworks, art happened at the specific moment when people came into contact with physical (and authentic) artworks, and that could break the oppression of reality, providing new ways of seeing and moments of aesthetic pleasure, with beauty or horror. Those were exceptional moments in the life of those people.
Now, there are abundant works with aesthetic appeal popping up everywhere on TV, internet, games, movies, radio, and many others. Now, rare are the moments when people are fully disconnected from aesthetic experiences. That profusion of visuals, sounds, gestures and words are made both by professionals and by amateurs. That superabundance isn't a guarantee of awareness about artistic language and its evolution. I venture to say that the most of everything called art today is only artistic exercise.


Do you disagree? Leave a comment!

Anti-art

Among my friends I'm labeled as an anti-artist. That's because I have deep concern about the functionality of the things I do.  But, more than that, I have a deep concern about what is labeled as art in the last decades.
Every single thing can be art today, I mean, every act of expression can be labeled as art with some sort of rhetoric juggle. "Art" became a synonym of expression and creativity. There are no clear boundaries between what is and what is not art.
So far, so good. What bothers me is that I can't say if it looks more like a promising stem cell or a lethal cancerous cell.
What is called art today can't escape from the vicious circle that exists since the avant garde movements of the last century. The avant garde artists left little to break and the artists today are trapped, like post-apocalyptic survivors. They can't bring back the clear boundaries of art, and they seems stuck without know what to do next.
New technologies came and they were absorbed by the creative people. The tools changed, but there isn't a clear sense of critic awareness pervading what is proposed. The "techno-artists" today are so amazed with the new technologies that they seems to be not concerned with developing the artistic language.
In our time, every single artist is an autonomous art movement, like flying islands, with little connection between them.

Not every creative action is art: they're just creativity manifesting. It can happen when a company develops a revolutionary computer, or when pharmacists synthesizes a brand new drug that cures a disease. Art is more complex.

Hacking the Kinect 360: Installing OpenNI on OSX Lion - Mountain Lion - Mavericks

Tutorial to install OpenNI on OSX Lion / Mountain Lion / Mavericks  (and then, Osceleton).

Only for Kinect for Xbox 360!!!  Doesn't work with Kinect for Windows (and Kinect for Xbox One, I guess...)

Preparation
For OSX Lion and Mountain Lion, you must install (the latest version, preferably) of:
XCode
Command line tools for Xcode:
To install the Command Line Tools open XCode, go XCode> Open Developer Tool> More Developer Tools. Log in as an Apple developer, and download the Command Line Tool for your OS.

XQuartz
MacPorts

CMake

Installation
With the above programs installed, follow the installation order below.

Libtool
Open Terminal (Applications> Utilities> Terminal) and run the following command:

sudo port install libtool

Hit Enter, and then, enter the admnistrador password and hit Enter.

Libusb
Open terminal and run (exactly) the following command:

sudo port install libusb +universal

Hit Enter, and then, enter the admnistrador password and hit Enter.

OpenNI
First of all, I recommend creating a folder named "kinect" in "documents" (not required, do it only for organizational reasons).

Download this version of the OpenNI SDK and extract it in the "kinect" folder

Open Terminal;
Change directory to the OpenNI SDK folder;
Run the command to install:

sudo ./install.sh

Install SensorKinect
Download the latest version of SensorKinect and extract it in your "kinect" folder.
Go to the "bin" folder. Extract the file "SensorKinect093-Bin-MacOSX-v5.1.2.1.tar.bz2" in the same "bin" folder.
In Terminal, go to the extracted folder and run the command:

sudo . /install.sh

Install PrimeSense NITE
Download this version of NITE.

Extract the contents of the folder "kinect."
Open Terminal, go to the directory "NITE-Bin-MacOSX-Dev-v1.5.2.21"
Run the command:

sudo . /install.sh

TEST

To test the demos, copy all *. xml files that are in "NITE-Bin-Dev-MacOSX-v1.5.2.21/Data" to "SensorKinect-unstable/Data"

Plug the Kinect on the Mac to check if the demos work.

Run one of the examples of NITE.
Open Terminal,
Go to the directory "NITE-Bin-Dev-MacOSX-v1.5.2.21/Samples/Bin/x64-Release"
open the example "PointViewer" with the command:

. /Sample-PointViewer

Shake hands, OpenNI  will track your hand.

Installing Osceleton
Download the OSCeleton
Extract the content in the "kinect" folder

Open terminal
Go to folder "yourKinectFolder/OSCeleton-master"
Run the command:

make

If everything worked, you can now test OSCeleton:
In the folder "OSCeleton-master" double-click the executable "OSCeleton" or open it in Terminal.
Keep a distance of approximately two steps away from Kinect and stay in position of calibration, with both arms raised, as shown below:

Keep an eye on the Terminal to see if you are recognized.
If a recognition happens, the installation was successful.

Running OSCeleton and communicating with Processing

You will need to install Processing (first) and so the libraries oscP5 and pbox2d.

Download the libraries, extract and copy the folders "oscP5" and "pbox2d" to the Libraries folder inside the Processing folder (normally located in "Documents")

Download the examples for OSCeleton
Extract the folder and go to "Sensebloom-OSCeleton-examples-d56823f 2/processing/MotionCapture3D" and open the sketch "MotionCapture3D" in Processing.
Click "Run" and if you're recognized, you will see an avatar of spheres.

That's it!!

If you have any question, or if it worked (or don't) please, leave a comment!

Science fair or art?

Generally speaking, science is innovative because it extends the understanding of natural processes and amplifies the human potential. It is a process that sometimes explain something that already exists, but wasn't understood, sometimes proposes new ways to exist in the objective world. Thus, science can be creative or not, and, similarly, this happens with the human expressiveness.
The human expressiveness may propose reflection of the existent, creating nothing, or may propose new ways of seeing and acting in the objective world, being, therefore, a creative process.
Science can't be expressive (or, at least, attractive)? I think it could.
I say this because an observer evaluated my work (which I consider a creative one) as a typical object of science fair, and said that I need to make it more humanized in order to make it more accessible to the public.
This raised a question about the appeal of artistic activities versus the appeal of science and technology fairs. The conclusion we drew (among my colleagues) is that technology and science fairs can be sometimes much more attractive than artistic activities, which currently tend to be anemic and distanced from the public.
The technology currently attracts public attention with such virulence that is hard to imagine a parallel in the art world. Just look at the Apple conference, which arouse rumors months before they happen, or the lines formed for the first day sales of a new Ipad.

1st day of sales of the Ipad

Thus, we can say that technology is so attractive (or more) than art in the current context, mainly due to product functionality and inovation.
A team committed to developing a cutting-edge technology product is formed by professionals of excellence, working together in a multi and transdisciplinary way, presenting new possibilities of existence, directly influencing culture, lifestyle and even human evolution.
I don't mean that my personal work purports to be a proponent of evolution for humans, but I'm saying that a creative product can escape the stereotypes of art and human expression, approaching the science fairs, and still be attractive to the public.

My work to which I referred;


Rhythm Machine (work in Progress) from Italo Travenzoli on Vimeo.

What is Creative Coding?

In order to understand the concept of creative coding, is necessary to establish a parallel with the commercial programming: while the commercial programming develops products to attend to the demands of the market, "creative coding" is the denomination for the use of computers for creative purposes, or as a means of expression, which may or may not be a commercial product. Both make use of computer programming, but there is a huge diference between them: the amount of responsibility and individual expression. A software for a bank or for an automatic flight control system can't fail and, surely, the inner feelings of the programmer doesn't matter.
Creative coding is a broader term that computer art, because computer art refers specifically to the approach of computer science with the practices that are traditionally classified as art, while the creative coding covers all creative use of computational tools, in specific programming, including game development, design, architecture, engineering, electronics, which may not be framed as art in the strict sense.
Creative coding is a term in the boundary between science, technology, art and design (and many other areas), which causes much confusion for the average person. Despite the creative use of the programming can not be considered as a novelty, since there are experiments in this area dating from the 60's , the term is little known, even in institutions where creativity is seen as a basic feature. I studied at the School of Fine Arts of UFMG and only heard this term in the last semester, when the teacher that was my supervisor,  Chico Marinho, talked about this area in informal conversations (away from the curriculum).
If most of the teachers of art disregard the computation as a creative tool - or even act prejudicially against any form of expression that escape from the traditionalism, imagine those outside the academic environment ...
The aesthetic value is not mandatory, as well as the functionality, but both may be present, and sometimes simultaneously.

Creative coding can be regarded as an underground subculture, with its own characteristics, being a community that tend to be attracted by the open source tools, operating collaboratively, sharing code, creating and sharing libraries, participating actively in the maintenance, growth and development of the community.
The program languages​​, despite being (almost) exclusively in English, are universal, emphasizing the integration between people who share interests and point of view.
The tooling is broad, with varying degrees of complexity, with new members joining every day around the world. The potential is enormous, ranging since rough prototypes to professional works, depending on the use made of this tool.

You have a different opinion? Would like to add something? Leave a comment!

All in English

Considering the requests, I will post in English from now. Hope you like it!

Feira de ciências ou arte?

Em sentido estrito, a ciência é inovadora pois estende a compreensão dos processos naturais e amplifica a potencialidade humana. É um processo que por vezes explica algo que já existe, mas não era compreendido, por vezes propõe novas formas de existir no mundo objetivo. Dessa forma, a ciência pode ser ou não criativa, e, semelhantemente, isto acontece com a expressividade humana.
A expressividade humana pode propor reflexão sobre o existente, não criando nada, ou pode propor formas inéditas de enxergar e atuar neste mundo objetivo, sendo portanto, um processo criativo.
É imperativo a criatividade na expressividade, ou que a criatividade seja expressiva? Creio que não.
Falo isso pois um observador avaliou meu trabalho (que eu considero como criativo) como sendo um trabalho típico de feira de ciências, e que eu precisava deixá-lo mais humanizado para que ele fosse mais acessível ao público.
Isso levantou a um questionamento sobre o apelo das mostras artísticas versus o apelo das feiras de tecnologia e ciência. A conclusão que extraímos (entre meus colegas) é que as feiras de tecnologia e ciência costumam ser muito mais atraentes que as mostras artísticas, que atualmente apresentam-se anêmicas e distanciadas do público.
A tecnologia atualmente atrai a atenção do público com tamanha virulência que é difícil imaginar um paralelo no mundo da arte. Basta olhar as conferências da Apple, que despertam rumores meses antes de acontecerem, ou as filas formadas para o primeiro dia de vendas de um novo Ipad.

Fila para o lançamento do Ipad 2

Dessa forma, é possível afirmar que a tecnologia é tão ou mais atraente que a arte no contexto atual, sobretudo devido a funcionalidade dos produtos.

Uma equipe empenhada no desenvolvimento de um produto tecnológico de ponta é formado por profissionais de excelência, que trabalham em conjunto de forma multi e transdisciplinar, apresentando novas possibilidades de existência, influindo diretamente na cultura, estilo de vida e até na evolução da espécie humana.
Não quero dizer que meu trabalho pessoal tem a pretensão de ser um proponente de evolução para a espécie humana, mas que um produto criativo pode fugir dos estereótipos da arte e da expressividade humana, aproximando-se das feiras de ciência, e mesmo assim serem atraentes para o público.

O meu trabalho ao qual me referi;


Rhythm Machine (work in Progress) from Italo Travenzoli on Vimeo.