spot blog

Lévy flights

My friend Nick passed me a link to a blog which led me to this paper, and then an article, and finally the obligatory wikipedia entry. Pretty soon we are reading about Einstein, Mandelbrot, Pollock, the Central Limit Theorem, and something shared by Man and Monkey: how we wander.

Lisa Rein Interview Part 2 including NIN Machinima

A new installment On Lisa Rein's Radar, including NIN music/video she recorded at the opening of the Sheep Vortex.

previously.

Snaps from Sheep Vortex Premier

Snapshots from premiere of Sheep Vortex.

Spoke at Life 2.0

I just gave a lecture/panel at Life 2.0 in Second Life. Previous speakers included Mitch Kapor and Eben Moglen. Somatika and I spoke about the Electric Sheep and the Sheep Vortex our interactive installation. Gallery from the talk, and another pic from lisa rein.

FLAM3 v2.7.10 released

Get it here. Changelog:

Fixed interpolation bug when magnitude of rotation/scaling component of affine transform is 0. Replaced secant variation with more flame-friendly secant2 (eliminates gap in y direction, scales y-coordinate by weight). Warning message now printed when unrecognized variation is present in an xform. Fixed bad inequality when checking for -pi/pi discontinuity during complex interpolation.

Thx to Erik for the coding par excellance as usual!

Java Flame Editor

There's a new flame editor, apophysis-j by Jean-François Bouzereau. It's written in Java so it should run on Mac, Linux, and Windows. And it's distributed under the GPL. Thanks JFB!

Sheep on Stage

I finally got this picture from 2006 when sheep were projected at the harmony festival. Nice production, I'll bet it was an awesome show.

Second Life Premier: Sheep Vortex

This Thursday March 13th 6-9pm PST is my premiere in Second Life, the online virtual world. Node Zero Gallery is hosting an interactive sculpture Sheep Vortex that combines Electric Sheep video with 3D design by Somatika Xiao. You can join us "inworld" from anywhere, or in person at the Atlas Cafe at 20th and Alabama in San Francisco.

On BoingBoing , Massively.

Special thanks to Lisa Rein for the push that made it happen. Be sure to check out her interview of me, transcribed on her blog.

Strange Culture including Sheep Cameo

Lynn Hershman Leeson has a new film coming out: Strange Culture, about the ongoing plight of Steve Kurtz. I wrote about this when it first happened and years later as tragedy ground into Kafkaesque persecution. Alas Steve still faces decades in prison. Please help him, and defend everyone's right to free speech.

The film stars Peter Coyote, Tilda Swinton, and Thomas Jay Ryan. I haven't seen it yet myself, but it's getting rave reviews everywhere from Sundance to the New York Times. You can pre-order on Amazon. I am proud to have contributed in a small way: as you can see from the still from the trailer on the right, the sheep have a cameo.

Android Electric Sheep Underway

The Electric Sheep and Android, the cell phone operating system are a natural fit, and not just because of the naming coincidence. I've wanted to port since before day one. Alas my nose is glued to the grindstone, and this fascinating but speculative combination has had to wait.... and we are still waiting :). But thanks to Jessica Owensby-Sandifer and Gloria W of DevChix.Org we have hope, progress, and a screenshot from the simulator. When it's ready for public consumption we'll announce it here. Rock on!

Electric Sheep Covered by Discover

The Electric Sheep was recommended by Discover Magazine in their survey of distributed computing. They had this to say:

What it is: If Darwin returned as an artist with a knack for computer science, he might be Scott “Spot” Draves, creator of Electric Sheep, a collective of computers that renders artwork. Animations, or “sheep,” evolve into high-definition abstract paintings, spawning off in random mutations. But it’s more science than you’d expect. “I want people to see the power of evolution,” Draves says. “I'd like people to accept evolution and randomness as the ultimate creative force in our universe.”

How it works: The program creates sheep whose color, shape, and motion are specified by a "genetic code." If a user sees a sheep he likes, she may vote for it. Sheep that receive more votes live longer and are more likely to reproduce.

Our take: Must scientists get all the distributed-computing love? Perhaps not.

They first covered the Sheep in the August 2004 issue.