Piero Umiliani - Open Space (1971)
Case in point: THIS is ham radio raised to an art form:
http://www.intio.or.jp/jf10zl/
If you have any interest in #hamradio or #electronics at all, my suggestion is that you study, in detail, every project on JF10ZL's site. This is the work of an artist.
Some of my favourites:
Because in 2005 or so I dared to wonder: whither esolang?
What would motivate people spend their time making weird programming languages?
Seriously why would you even.
So I wondered: is it art? Is this an art form?
(Answer: yes, if ham radio is an art form, which I think we have to admit is sometimes yes: ham radio is sometimes is raised to an art form.)
So I spent some years after that studying art, and then aesthetics (because it's easier to reason about than art).
My favourite is the showshovel, because it's just so incredibly banal.
IIRC Duchamp claimed his readymades were "anti-aesthetic", that he was looking for objects that were aesthetically null.
After Simondon's thoughts on techno-aesthetics, though, that sounds a bit absurd: how can a tool have *no* aesthetics?
But if you take it to mean, like, no "particular" aesthetics, sort of "camoflaged" against the background of the quotidian world, then maybe.
So with these "theorizing" toots, I'm more-or-less writing notes to myself, except they're also public.
Thought my head would be clearer after writing those ones this morning, and I guess it is, but also they have raised new questions for me, and reminded me of yet others in the back of my mind. So it goes.
New #gewgaw installed online (way overdue):
Pixed-Point (2015)
☄ http://catseye.tc/ix/Pixed-Point
Just in case you were looking for some conceptual generative pixel art, here is a Javascript program that generates images that truthfully represent how many pixels they themselves contain.
In general I totally support the idea that you should always add a text description to the images you upload to social media (or elsewhere on the internet.)
But what if the image doesn't lend itself to, or benefit from, a prose description? "Some experimental abstract art I just made" is not very helpful.
But what if users had some way to *translate* an image into a *tactile* form so they could *feel* its graphic composition?
Midcentury Modern Cockatrice