ristoid @ristoid@qoto.org

It's a pity my favourite gallery had to close. No other options when the landlord trebled the rent. I write about such things, and do a mini-review of Laurent Buffet's recent book Captation et subversion in my latest post here:
https://ristoid.substack.com/p/closed-gallery

A new album is soon ready for your ears. Here's an example of what it mostly doesn't sound like.

https://soundcloud.com/oberdada-1/ocean-memory

Just in case I forget to announce it.

It’s hard to keep up with the developments in AI. Discussions about how to solve some of the problems assume it would be possible, and also desirable so that we can continue expanding AI use even more. Now that a study has shown AI tool use hampers critical thinking, and another study has demonstrated a LLM able of self-replication, we need to take a step back and think critically, while we still can.

These are some of the things I discuss in my latest article, along with a critique of some really bad AI art.

https://ristoid.substack.com/p/moving-fast-and-breaking-things

There is a symmetry between provocative art and iconoclasm: Art often provokes by making fun of sacred religious symbols, whereas iconoclasm degrades or destroys the secular sacred which is art. Non-violent disruptive action in art museums attracts a lot of attention, though its efficacy in achieving its desired policy changes is questionable.

I'm revisiting an old cartoon debate and take a look at recent activism in art spaces in this new post:
https://ristoid.substack.com/p/on-actionism-and-art-vandalism

Un coup de d​é​s: New album on Sanntidsmusikk

A new release on the label Sanntidsmusikk includes three works for melodica and modular synthesizer: Toile d'araignée, Un coup de dés, and Blaker Skanse.

Toile d'araignée is a fast paced miniature. The sounds come from a chaotic feedback patch on a modular synthesizer. The title alludes to the cobweb diagrams used to visualise the dynamics of chaotic systems.

According to Mallarmés phrase, un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard, a single throw of the die never abolishes chance, but how about rolling the die some hundred times? Un coup de dés is a series of 15 variations on a random theme, literally created by throwing a twelve-sided die over a hundred times and translating the numbers to pitch classes. Some variations just play through the theme in different pitch ranges, tempi, and timbral articulations. The first variation is a duet on melodica with occasional siren interruptions. Variations II – XIV are performed on modular synthesizer, mostly recorded on four-track porta studio and subsequently digitally edited. In the last variation the instrumentation includes real and synthesised singing, granulated guitar, a frame drum, and an analogue synthesizer. As the theme is incessantly repeated through its various guises, the apparent randomness gives way to a sense of purposiveness.

Blaker Skanse is a piece of music theatre or a performance named after the location where it was premièred in 2017. This recording was made outdoors in Halden, September 2021 with the assistance of the organisers and participants in an exhibition. Blaker Skanse begins with an extremely slow theme played on melodica constructed around a three note motive. The theme is interrupted a few times by assistants in the audience. A short maracas interlude (with the instruction to wear a hat) marks the transition to the second half of the piece which explores rhythmically articulated clusters and chords.

The album is available as digital download, and will be issued on CD in an edition of 100 copies by early November.
https://sanntidsmusikk.bandcamp.com/album/un-coup-de-d-s

Are reading skills generally deteriorating? I would assume they are, and for all readers who are tired of text, here's my zine, almost exclusively made of collages based on found material.
https://ristoid.itch.io/housing-crisis

Since I don't have an art education I can only speculate about what it's like. Contemporary art is supposedly global. Perhaps the trend of globalisation reached its peak around 2019 and the world is about to diverge into smaller blocs, not only in economic cooperation zones and military coalitions, but also in terms of cultural exchange. Too early to tell. And I have absolutely no career advice to offer, but I'll dissect a few of the available services that cater to aspiring and hopeful artists. Right here in my latest post on the Needle's Haystack:
https://ristoid.substack.com/p/success-and-fail-again

The story behind Assange's plea deal is fascinating. Now that he is finally free, I look back at some art projects in his support and discuss the prospects of political or activist art to have an effect. One of the projects involved taking a valuable art collection hostage; if Assange would have died while in prison the whole collection would have been destroyed. What a relief for the collectors that he got out alive!

https://ristoid.substack.com/p/congratulations-to-assange

And what if I tell you that ιπα αλλμαλητε ικολες ?
More mail art, this time with a selfie portrait (as required by the receiver) and a new concrete poem with a simple animation. The program that generates these texts is still under development. There will never be a perfect program that generates perfect poems, fortunately, and by necessities. What was that saying, perfection stands in the way of failure?

https://makertube.net/w/sz3CGVZzh3sTWfVEHMS7Gs

The mail art exchange continues. If you are at the receiving end you might get a concrete poem in a hand-painted letter, which might also end up as an animation.

https://makertube.net/w/1GP7682FGvAYcTNhb1YRDY

Reading these generative poems is an interesting challenge. It's not a real language or a conlang, but might resemble some Indoeuropean hybrid. Words behave as noun-like or verb-like, some clearly have the function of prepositions, articles, or pronouns. There appears to be inclinations and some loose sense of grammar, but still I have no clue what any of it means! It's like the recent phonetic research of whale utterings. Pronounciation is far from obvious, since the words might be interpreted as belonging to some existing language, or rather different languages for each word. But there are ways to mispronounciate the words, as if speaking with an accent.

My latest essay about the consequences of generative AI has just been published.

Generative AI has produced some spectacular results, but its energy consumption is also spectacular. Although generative AI might not replace professional artists, its consequences are going to affect them anyway. It is a rather long post, but you don't have to read it in one go.

https://ristoid.substack.com/p/the-consequences-of-generative-ai

A sonic design anthology has just been published, and I have a chapter in it.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-57892-2
It's open access.

Recently I have developed some novel time domain signal descriptors. Audio signal analysis is the domain I have had in mind, but of course nothing restricts their application in other fields. Some of them might be interesting to use in adaptive effects or in feedback systems. Source code in c++ is available.
https://ristoid.net/prog/timedomain.html

Blaming someone who's defenceless makes it easier for ourselves. René Girard's theory of the Scapegoat sheds light on the New Testament and an ongoing genocide. Also a recent interview with Michael Hudson clarifies what's going on with a hint of systems analysis.

Full essay:
https://ristoid.substack.com/p/the-scapegoat

New short animation with concrete poetry:

https://makertube.net/w/ersdvurjvdvCYdrAxv9iq2

#stidimie #stihoo #etsahol #nases-ertist #hangimofan #oatzo-podaam #istem-ophera #iblabas toben #entagma aspoh #dobisiler
#apuenustar #ageforaden #ziramastei #anepones #boma-neneti #apopsa #kigeo-robo #orakubul #itues-ontra #uisio-prycos #intravencus #olsypop #rolentearo #ascotustid

Just a test, nothing to worry about.

gemini://oberdada.pollux.casa/gemlog/2024-04-27_poem_generator.gmi
In which I discuss words of this kind.

I have previously mentioned my encounter with the joys and frustrations of JavaScript. There is scant documentation of how to load a plain text document in an html object and specify the character encoding. Worse yet, it seems not guaranteed to work correctly, at least not in Firefox. Here is the page in question:

https://oberdada.neocities.org/

Art as we know it began in 1790 or thereabouts. Anything earlier that we might think of as art has to be declared to be art by a gesture similar to how a readymade is appointed. That's not my theory, and I don't think it needs to be taken too seriously, but I just posted a brief history of art and a reminder of my call for mail art exchange at the Needle's Haystack:
https://ristoid.substack.com/p/short-lesson-art-history

To all artists interested in mail art exchange. Please circulate among artists who might be interested.

As a part of this mail art project I will experiment with asemic writing and something very reminiscent of a conlang, except that the words are not intended to have any meaning. Video animations of a kind of audiovisual poetry are also planned. If you want to participate in the exchange, send me your post address by email. You may also send me your own mail art by regular post. The email contact will be useful to check if delivery is successful.

More information can be found on the official project page: https://ristoid.net/art/mailart.html

The project will run through the year, or perhaps longer. I intend to document sent letters or postcards, and will also scan and display incomming mail art on the project page. (Let me know if you prefer to remain anonymous).

In order not to make this an annual a habit, I make this announcement on a leap day.

Are there any artists here with a masters degree in arts or similar, who would like to share their experiences of their education?
How is theory balanced against practice, what's on the curriculum these days? What is expected of a student to be admitted on a program?

Until recently I have found no need to dabble with dynamic web pages. Javascript as a language turns out to be fun and easy. The intricate part is how to connect it to the html or css part. On the smolweb it is customary to point out the mess we're seing on the big web, all the distracting elements, all the fluff around very little actual content. Apart from the bloat as such, scripts are often pointed to as the culprit. Is this bloat and scripting proliferation partly a result of how fun it is to build such sites, or the amount of work a web programmer can charge for?

Dynamic web pages showing each visitor something unique and taylored to their profile is a recipe for removing a sense of common (online) reality. As an internet art project dynamic and unique web pages might be interesting to experiment with, leaving aside the way the internet almost always reduces art to "art", the medium erects quotation marks around the work, as it were.

This is another idea:
A single web page that presents documents once, and only once, from a large pool. When a document has been displayed it is disappeared and never shewn again. Withering away instead of accumulation; when resources are emptied they project ends.

René Girard seems to have had a profound understanding about scapegoating.

There is a short introduction in a series of brilliant animations that outlines his theories. In the second of five episodes, the animator rends homage to Norman McLaren by reconstructing one of his famous animations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYhazRKyNL4