‘Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass’

andrew - 20 Oct 2021

First, whatever time you have to read this, go watch this instead:

On the verge of Facebook renaming itself and moving to Europe (where have I seen this before?) I am reminded specifically of how much I am continuing to be delighted by what people are doing with VR and how grim the future under FB looks. I've spent the last couple of months immersing myself in the 3D production toolchain, and this tweet (from Tim Maughan, author of Infinite Detail, the screenplay for the short film linked above and connoisseur of NY pizza), is on repeat in my head:

In 2015 (somehow that is more than half a century ago), Anindita and I went to see D'Angelo and Mary J Blige perform at the Montreaux Jazz festival. D'Angelo was late... extremely late... and Quincy Jones (yes that Quincy Jones, at 82) spent a good deal of time on stage filling the dead air, keeping the crowd warm. When he finally appeared D'Angelo appeared slightly timid, perhaps a bit stoned, a bit rough for... all of two bars. Then, about 30 seconds in, he was on and totally killed it. Fantastic show.

Later I came across one of a series of articles about the artist and how much of a perfectionist he is. In particular there's an extended interview with collaborator Questlove, who talks about how D'Angelo got sick of people saying "Fuck your art, show us your ass." Which seems like an apt metaphor for where my head is at with regards to internet "content." In any case I am sure as hell no D'Angelo, but I found quite a bit of comfort in knowing that even when you reach a level where Quincy Jones runs interference for you, it can be difficult to put things on stage.

I keep Kio Stark's Done Manifesto close to my heart, but I've also been working on things for years because they're not right, and I'm deeply frustrated at my inability to get more out there, faster. I'm frustrated that I've drifted so far in time from ideas I was excited about, I'm frustrated by this fucking plague and the people working to extend it, by the fact that there's never enough time but also probably too much, and so much always forever. I'm frustrated that I've been unable to find myself to a place stable enough to engage the world the way I want to and also feed my people, but also, that's kind of how it works, isn't it? You're young until you're not / You love until you don't / You try until you can't.

I also realized recently, in a profound manner in which that obvious thing just hits you in the correct way: that I'd internalized a myth of the 90s internet. I'd imagined that building a brand, finding your audience, arriving at a perch, is the same as doing the work. It's not. As Adam Curtis said in the latest (and for me the most poignant*) of Laurie Anderson's Norton Lectures, the most radical thing you can do these days is something special and then... not share it.

But of course that's a bit boring, isn't it?

* Laurie Anderson is a personal hero of mine, and there's pretty much nothing she has or will do that I wont' find somehow relevant to my own interests. As an artist who works with technology I always somehow imagined I would get to engage the world the way she seems to have been able to, and of course I can't. There's the reality of just... growing up... and realizing that you cannot (as William Gibson says of his literary heroes) simply "hit the effect pedal of your favorite author" and succeed, but there's also a generational shift. Anderson and her cohort are and remain deeply important to me, but they are also part of a generation with a radically different relationship to technology and systems of power. Not better, but different. When Anderson talks (openly, honestly) about how she funded her work (with an email to Paul Allen that included a portfolio and the note "I am looking for a Medici") I am both thrilled and thrown into a tailspin at the impossibility of tracing this path. Oh Superman.

Another long and winding excuse for not writing to you in a while, but really probably me trying to feel better about sharing ideas and process, rather than finished work.

Hi.

I'm in deep production mode at the moment. Mostly commercial stuff to pay the bills (as usual). Some interesting stuff.

Meanwhile, here's a lit review for the fall:

I've written the introduction to a piece on NERD for HiLoBrow. Please check it out, and please check out the series, it's great.
I've not been invited to teach any of my scenography/theatre classes this year. I know all the schools are struggling with C19 related scheduling and also, I haven't reached out myself (so sure, this is on me maybe?), but still, I confess, dear reader, I'm a little bit sad and a little bit offended, as this ends a 7 year run teaching digital scenography in Switzerland. I'd like to figure out what to do with that material, but when you're not actually connected to an institution it's all just lost, like tears in the rain, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium...

I've been playing a lot of Sea of Thieves after a long run of Valheim (also fun). SoT is silly and rewards a lot of different play styles which I enjoy. It's the only game that involves PvP where instead of just being sniped in the head until I gave up I had the experience of: 1. Being charged 2. Firing a warning shot 3. Someone jumping on voice and saying "Dude, you have no chill... can we just form an alliance and share resources?" and 4. We did and all got rich together after defeating a ghost ship and a giant shark. This is way more fun than GTA. Also you can fly a pride flag from your ship and the default avs include a wide range body-types and skin colors and it's published by Microsoft, of all things. It's goofy as hell, but also could use some of that right now.

After about a year of being enthusiastic about VR as a participant, I've been spending a ton of time trying to come up to speed on the tools needed to build "the metaverse" or whatever you want to call it. 3D production is difficult, it's complicated. It's interesting. It involves engaging with extraordinarily complicated models of the world which also have specific technical limits. For instance, understanding how to texture something means you need to understand how lighting simulations work, which is quite a lot like the way light works in real life, but with computational limits that can break your aesthetic intuition at inopportune moments. It's a strange blend of science and art and physics and computation.

I've spent so much time NOT learning 3D tools because I believed in the accessibility of text (and I still do, I haven't given up my work on a Multiplayer IF engine), but I think there's a lot of work to do here, and I'm a bit distressed at how far behind I am. In any case I'm working on maybe producing a video series on "How does VR Work?" this, mostly because I also want an excuse to try video production using virtual footage, but also because I've had some patient teachers and I'd like to figure out a way to pay it forward in a way that reaches more people. If I do drop these I promise they will be in full fox-drag, because we need a lot more of that and a lot less pretending we enjoy being leg-less emojis in corporate liminal-space.

I had been working a lot on photogrammetry using open-source tools. It's hard! Then NYT Labs dropped this excellent article/tutorial that traces the state of the art. It's a wonderful resource, and points to RealityCapture, which has one of the more interesting licensing models I've seen (you pay for completed work you want to keep) and Meshroom, which looks super interesting (and free). I'll post about this if I make any more headway, meanwhile on pause because none of my current devices support any of this well, and I dropped my iPad in the bathtub and I can't really afford a bunch more gear right now.
I figured out how to port Townscaper constructions to VR. It's super fun. I have this fantasy of using it to teach Scenography and VR production, but meanwhile I should probably just get a tutorial online. Soon I hope.

Lots of behind-the-scenes work trying to convert most of my React software work to packages which I can 1. Reuse more easily in future projects and 2. Possibly share. Some conversations about new/renewed grants, but early stages. For now I'll say I can't get over how powerful the (free) Gitlab CI pipeline is. I've been running most of my tiny web empire on it for a couple of years now and the capabilities are amazing. Also, I recently discovered Unity uses NPM packages. I'm mulling over the possibility of creating a web-based avatar creation tool similar to Ready-Player Me but with more customization. So far all I've done is built a t-shirt maker, but it should work with other meshes. Working with the HTML5 canvas element has been a challenge. But I am amazed at how capable it is, and how much work has been done on 3d support (in Javascript!)

The VR Electronic music scene is off the hook. I cannot keep up, and it's mostly US timezone centric, and I've been on a bit of an introvert kick lately, but there is a google calendar for raves (yes lol. Also it's great.) Seriously, check it out.
Two updates on map-based work. Parkway Forest and From Weeds We Grow. Both produced with Toasterlab. These projects are not about the artifact online (although I do hope you'll investigate), but rather these online artifacts are the traces of communities owning their space. The events are the thing, and the ownership of public space is the thing, and I'm grateful and lucky to be a part of this Toronto-based work even from across the ocean.

Back in real-life, please check out Avant.fm if you are interested in Indie music, developed by Chris Marstall, an old friend who also brought us Tourfilter (no longer, but excellent).
I found this piece on parallels between Facebook and the Auto Industry incredibly useful. We've been here before, and we'll be here again. "The idea that coal burning could be subject to laws, or that a meaningful attempt could be made to keep corporations from dumping all of their industrial pollutants into rivers until those rivers regularly caught on fire, seemed at first impossible. Ruled over by enormously powerful and profitable companies, destructive industries have often been given a free pass on the grounds that restraining them would be too hard."
This piece of creative nonfiction by Vauhini Vara at the soon to be shutterred Belivermag, where she uses GPT3 AI to figure out how to write about the death of her sister, is complicated in a way I'm still unpacking. Just read it.

Please be well this skeleton-appreciation month, and if you want to hang out sometime get in touch? I miss you all quite terribly, and this plague freeze is melting so slowly.

"A new life for everyone. And me."

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