SArt project @ NTNU
The wall
Letizia Jaccheri
New media art and interactive art
installations
• The use of digital technology in contemporary art
is often referred to as new media art. Since the
early 90s within the new media art realm there is
a growing production of interactive art
installations.
• These artworks are generally complex and they
are heavily dependent on software for controlling
the whole system. The production of the
software often requires the involvement of
programmers and software engineers.
Sonic Onyx
Artist: Samir M’kadmi
Location: Blussvoll skole,
Trondheim, Norway
Flyndre
Artists: Øyvind
Brandtsegg and Nils Aas
Location: Straumen
Inderøy, Norway
Flyndre
Artists: ?
Location: IT-building
NTNU Trondheim
software system
input
output
Software system
Business goals:
-more money
-more efficient
An art installation as a software system
input
output
Software system
Artistic goals:
-reflection
-emotion
Software is used in Interactive
Installation Art for:
• 1) for controlling the numerous sensors that are
capturing environmental parameters;
• 2) for incorporating the captured parameters into
music/light that is played by the sculpture;
• 3) for maintaining an archive of the music
generated in the past;
• 4) for presenting online of the artwork, the artist,
the music archive and the software itself;
• 5) etc.
Algorithms
• Beauty?

Complexity?
J. Schmidhuber. Low-Complexity Art. Leonardo, Journal of the International Society
for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, 30(2):97-103, MIT Press, 1997.
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/locoart/locoart.html
Learn to program with Art
http://processing.org/
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size(200, 200);
background(127);
noStroke();
for(int i=0; i<height; i+=20) {
fill(0);
rect(0, i, width, 10);
fill(255);
rect(i, 0, 10, height);
}
Learn to program with Art
http://processing.org/
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void setup()
{
size(200, 200);
background(51);
noStroke();
smooth();
noLoop();
}
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void draw()
{
draw_target(68, 34, 200, 10);
draw_target(152, 16, 100, 3);
draw_target(100, 144, 80, 5);
}
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void draw_target(int xloc, int yloc, int size, int num)
{
float grayvalues = 255/num;
float steps = size/num;
for(int i=0; i<num; i++)
{
fill(i*grayvalues);
ellipse(xloc, yloc, size-i*steps, size-i*steps);
}
}
SArt
• SArt – Software Engineering (SE) and Art
• Currently involved in three software-intensive
Art projects
SArt team
Salah
Letizia
Anna
http://prosjekt.idi.ntnu.no/sart/
Why SE and Art? (1)
• New
– Other interdisciplinary fields (e.g. health, automotive)
have been addressed in SE research, we focus on Art
• Relevant
– Contemporary Art is often highly software dependent
(e.g. new media art, interactive art installations,
performative art, etc.)
– Emerging industries (e.g. Entertainment - game
industry, music, web) often bring artists and software
developers together
Why SE and Art? (2)
• Useful
– In Education – raising awareness, increasing the
tolerance, etc.
– Foster Innovation and Creativity – Artists tend to use
newest technologies in innovative ways
• Rigor
– Use existing SE theories and methods, including
empirical studies
– Identify particularities of the domain -> tailor the
existing SE theories, methods and tools to the specific
needs of Art
Software Engineering and Art
possibilities at NTNU
• TDT69 Artistic software: processes and
products
• EiT Experts in team villages
– 2008, 2006 – Art and Software
– 2005 – Kunst og teknologi tør du?
– 2004 – IT og Kunst
• Project works and Master thesis
the wall
?
– inspire reflection about IT with focus on openness,
copyrights, and authorship.
– I want to learn something new and work with
people at a deeper level, have fun
– and at the same time I am afraid of what I do not
know and of ruining good relationships.
This presentation: structure
• Sart project
• The existing IDI wall
http://mediawiki.idi.ntnu.no/wiki/sart
– Past and future
• The new wall, we should find a working name
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why?
where?
what?
how?
who?
The IDI wall
• http://mediawiki.idi.ntnu.no/wiki/sart
• 7. mai
– ntnu videre kl. 18 NKUL
• 19-20 juni
– http://ez.no/no/company/ez_conference_awards
lecture about openess and the wall
• June/Autumn Itovasjon and competition
•
The IDI wall lesson learnt and
challeges
openness/copyrights/authorship
Openess for learning, motivation, energy, cooperation
about hardware (Elprint, CPU Atmel), network (IP),
software (Java and Flash), copyrights and licences (BSD is
the most free licence), local and global issues, estetic,
working group, etc.
• Openess generates caos and frustration
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Software: Java and Flash and Open source repository
Hardware: reconstruct the history
Cables
Roles: do we have an artist?
Who is the leader? Self confidence exercise, high creativity but
also paralysis since I depend on the good will and interest of
people
about motivation
about cooperation
about challenges: Flash animation
the new wall: why?
• Make the town of trondheim (its inhabitants
and vistors) reflect about IT with focus on
openness, copyrights, and authorship
– Both the wall itself and its content
• Names:
– Trondheimsvegg
– Trondheimsblogg
– Myspace/facebook/playlist
–?
what?
• Reconstruct the wall in wireless Trondheim
• architect/artist (shape, size)
• hardware engineer (hw) buy or make
•
software engineer
• reuse the idea of having one public IP and total openness for getting and
sending info
• the wall behaves like a browser, it accepts sound, picture, video, and text
• Technical issues, concurrency of access, time sharing
• the wall records the story of what has been sent like a blog
• users can see the content on the wall and hear sounds through IP enabled
devices like mobile phones
• users can see the content of the wall and hear sound on their computers
through a browser
• requirements, architectures, testing, maintenance, tools, open source
software,
how?
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add music, exploit wireless town
+
move the exiting one somewhere into town
Rebuild a similar one with IDI resources
buy a similar one, see the one at
Trondheimstorget
• buy LCD screen(s)
who?
• Artist
– Espen Gangvik teks?
– Samir M'kadmi (Ulrika-Wallin Johansen 30th April)
• Architect?
– knut.e.larsen@ntnu.no?
– Åsmund G.
• Software programmer
– Hallvard Trætteberg IDI
– soundscape
• Hardware
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group IDI?
Soundscape
Midgaard
Buy LCD or other
• sponsors
where?
• inside
– museum/school
– airport/train station
– shopping mal
– organization like StatoilHydro or IT company
• outside
– Torget
–…
To conclude
• We have a prototype at IDI which costed circa
200KNOK but a lot ot work was done by
students and researchers. Hardware was
donated by for example Atmel. We estimate 1
MNOK if professional services have to be
bought. It will live its life at IDI. Effort required
• Shall I start the new wall project? Why? If yes,
which are the next steps?