Hacker artist

A hacker artist creates art by hacking on technology as an artistic medium. Such artists may work with graphics, computer hardware, sculpture, music and other audio, animation, video, software, simulations, mathematics, reactive sensory systems, text, poetry, literature, or any combination thereof. Hacker artists are sometimes incorrectly confused with crackers, who break in to computer systems.

Description

Dartmouth College musician Larry Polansky states: "Technology and art are inextricably related. Many musicians, video artists, graphic artists, and even poets who work with technology – whether designing it or using it – consider themselves to be part of the 'hacker community.' Computer artists, like non-art hackers, often find themselves on society’s fringes, developing strange, innovative uses of existing technology. There is an empathetic relationship between those, for example, who design experimental music software and hackers who write communications freeware." [Polansky, L. (1998) "Singing Together, Hacking Together, Plundering Together: Sonic Intellectual Property in Cybertimes," "Humanities Research Institute 98 "The Tangled Web." [http://www.the-open-space.org/osonline/polansky/singing.html the-open-space.org] ]

Another description is offered by Jenny Marketou: "Hacker artists operate as culture hackers who manipulate existing techno-semiotic structures towards a different end, to get inside cultural systems on the net and make them do things they were never intended to do." [Sollfrank, C. (2000) "Hacking Seductions as Art," interview in Hamburg, Germany. [http://www.thing.net/~jmarketo/interviews/cornelia.shtml thing.net] ]

Examples

A successful software and hardware hacker artist is [http://www.art.net/mkl Mark Lottor (mkl)] , who has created the 3-D light art projects entitled the [http://nw.com/nw/projects/cubatron Cubatron] , and the [http://nw.com/nw/projects/brc Big Round Cubatron] . This art is made using custom computer technology, with specially designed circuit boards and programming for microprocessor chips to manipulate the LED lights.

Don Hopkins is a software hacker artist well-known for [http://www.art.net/Studios/Hackers/Hopkins/Don/art/cell.html his artistic cellular automata] . This art, created by a cellular automata computer program, generates objects which randomly bump into each other and in turn create more objects and designs, similar to a lava lamp, except that the parts change color and form through interaction. Says Hopkins, "Cellular automata are simple rules that are applied to a grid of cells, or the pixel values of an image. The same rule is applied to every cell, to determine its next state, based on the previous state of that cell and its neighboring cells. There are many interesting cellular automata rules, and they all look very different, with amazing animated dynamic effects. 'Life' is a widely known cellular automata rule, but many other lesser known rules are much more interesting."

Some hacker artists create art by writing computer code, and others, by developing hardware. Some create with existing software tools such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.

The creative process of hacker artists can be more abstract than artists using non-technological media. For example, mathematicians have produced visually stunning graphic presentations of fractals, which hackers have further enhanced, often producing detailed and intricate graphics and animations from simple mathematical formulas.

References

See also

*Art.Net
*Burning Man Festival
*Computer art
*Computer music
*Digital art

*Electronic art
*Electronic art music
*Electronica
*Experiments in Art and Technology

*Generative art
*Internet art
*Robotic art
*Software art

Hacker Artists

*Leonardo DaVinci
*Don Hopkins - [http://www.donhopkins.com web site] - [http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins studio]
*Steve Mann - [http://www.wearcam.org web site]

*Pamela Z - [http://pamelaz.com/ web site]
*Karl Sims - [http://www.genarts.com/karl/index.html web site]
*Richard Stallman (rms) - [http://stallman.org web site]

*Brad Templeton - [http://www.templetons.com/brad web site]
*Leonard H. Tower Jr. - [http://www.mit.edu/~tower/new-home.html studio]

Hacker Art Web sites

*SITO - [http://www.sito.org web site]

External links

Hacker Artists

* [http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/strata Strata Chalup]
* [http://www.lile.com/ Lile Elam] - [http://www.art.net/lile studio]
* [http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/Falk Ed Falk]
* [http://hackvan.com Stig Hackvan]

* [http://www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Samia/kinetic/kinetic.html Samia Halaby]
* [http://remarque.org/~nozefngr/fineart/fineart.html Chris Hull] (nozefngr)
* [http://www.netjam.org/ Craig Latta]
* [http://www.nw.com/mkl Mark Lottor] (mkl)

* [http://rhizome.org/member.rhiz?user_id=1027916 Paul Slocum]
* [http://www.sito.org/~ed/ Ed Stastny]
* [http://starshine.org/star Star] (Heather Stern)

Hacker Art Projects

* [http://www.art.net/Studios/Hackers/Hopkins/Don/art/cell.html Cellular Automata] by Don Hopkins
* [http://steike.com/GeneticArt Genetic Art at Steike.Com]
* [http://steike.com/MoreGpArt More Genetic Art at Steike.Com]
* [http://www.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html Evolved Virtual Creatures]

* [http://nw.com/nw/projects/aural Aural Gratification Ring]
* [http://nw.com/nw/projects/cubatron Cubatron] Cube 3D Light Sculpture
* [http://nw.com/nw/projects/brc Big Round Cubatron] Round 3D Light Sculpture

*SITO's [http://www.sito.org/synergy/gridcosm Synergy / Gridcosm]
*SITO's [http://www.sito.org/synergy/hygrid Synergy / Hygrid]
*SITO's [http://www.sito.org/synergy/panic Synergy / Panic]

Hacker Art Web sites

* [http://www.art.net/studios/hackers Hacker Artists Studios] on Art.Net
* [http://www.complexification.net Gallery of Computation]

* [http://music.yahoo.com/ar-304414---The-Hacker Music.Yahoo.Com: The Hacker Artist]

* [http://rhizome.org Rhizome.Org] Connecting Art & Technology

Hacker Art Mentions

* [http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_artikel.asp?iProjectID=8537 Ars Electronica Festival Archive] "Vector in Open Space" by Gerfried Stocker 1996.
* [http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc=222 Switch|Journal] Jun 14 1998.
* [http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_07.16.98/news_views/eyenet16.html Eye Weekly] "Tag -- who's it?" by Ingrid Hein, July 16, 1998.
* [http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-07-05-003-10-NW-LF Linux Today] "Playing the Open Source Game" by Shawn Hargreaves, Jul 5, 1999.
* [http://library.cant.ac.uk/e-resources/rbs-art.htm Canterbury Christ Church University Library] Resources by Subject - Art & Design, 2001.
* [http://www.steim.org/steim/workshops.php?id=3&b=1&r=0 SuperCollider Workshop / Seminar] Joel Ryan describes collaboration with hacker artists of Silicon Valley. 21st March, 2002
* [http://www.xminc.com/mt/archives/2003_09.html Anthony Barker's Weblog on Linux, Technology and the Economy] "Why Geeks Love Linux", Sept 2003.
* [http://art.ntu.ac.uk/performance_research/birringer/daplit3.htm Live Art Research] Gesture and Response in Field-Based Performance by Sha Xin Wei & Satinder Gill, 2005.
* [http://www.coolwebpagetools.com/blog/posts/2005/07 Cool Web Page Tools] "Color Sequencer" by Paul Slocum, July 2005.