Emare residence
Martin Howse
ap02 represents the next stage in the development of the artificial
paradises project initiated by Martin Howse.
Software or code is often subjugated to the demands of functionality; a
black box which performs defined tasks and whose inner workings are hidden
from view. ap exposes code as environment and environment as code, examining
and questioning the givens and layers of abstraction inherent in current
technological models, exploring new modes of systems theory with wider
consequences for contemporary culture.
ap is concerned with the liberation of data encoding and generation from any
given model or architecture (any fixed operating system in its widest
sense). Such a liberation operates at the border of control and non-control.
The ap01 performance system extensively investigates this border, making
code and systematics visible through cross-media data generation. Baroque
control structures and self organising feedback loops are expressed within a
cluster of 16 machines equipped with sound, video control and process
modules. Through mediating data input to the system, performers insert
themselves into this complex system, playing with the symphonic rise and
fall of the border of control.
ap02 presents a promiscuous model of data generation and self-display,
making use of a virtual machine architecture to develop and execute self
modifying instruction sets across networked nodes. Reconfigurable code is
interwoven with and determined by network and environmental data. Nodes
expand virally through diverse machine environments as they actively seek
for data across any network. The body of the work is code (material) and in
work this code is made evident, visible. The only functionality of ap02 is
in self display; showing its own changing, performative code as it runs.
ap02 is expressed within two interwoven projects; as physical self display
devices and as a freely available, distributed networked application.
ap0201 self display devices:
Physical self-display devices are devices which communicate ever changing
operational codes based on external environmental data. These self-powering
tiny devices are scattered throughout any environment and do not transmit or
relay in any manner useful sensory data to any observer. They can only be
experienced within the (often remote) situation in which they are placed.
the self-reliant operational characteristics of these devices engender
open-ness and expansion in any situation.
The devices are solar powered and have been designed to operate for a
minimum of three years within harsh environments. Over this time period the
devices modify their own instruction code, the program they are running, in
response to environmental changes. Fragments of code are audibly
communicated between devices which can incorporate and make use of this new
code. Each device displays on LCD a segment of its operational code. through
self display and communication these devices are integrated into the
environment.
ap0202 distributed self display application:
ap0202 makes use of current de-centralized p2p (peer to peer)
inter-networking technologies to implement multiple self display devices
virtually on any networked machine. The environment for the changing code is
both the network and the machine on which the software is running. Cells of
code promiscuously modify and are modified by data available to the machine;
audio input and output, video, stored information and visual display. Code
cells communicate, split and join with other code cells both locally and
across the global network, working through a vast memory environment
composed of both data and code. ap0202 explores new models of cellular
coding of great use for future work, implementing flexible new instruction
sets and questioning the separation of data and environment from code.