In the early 1960s digital computers became available to artists for the first time (although they cost from $100.000 to several millions, required air conditioning, and therefore located in separate computer rooms, uninhabitable studios; programs and data had to be prepared with the keypunch, punch cards then fed into the computer; systems were not interactive and could produce only still images).

The output medium was usually a pen plotter, microfilm plotter (hybrid bwn vector CRT and a raster image device), line printer or an alphanumeric printout, which was then manually transferred into a visual medium.

VISUAL AESTHETICS IN EARLY COMPUTING (1950-80)

Please use some nice active speakers or headphones when watching it…

SILICA-ESC is a generative movie that portrays possible computing platform for the future. The story takes place in Singapore, where the decision about massive production of the new computing platform – SILICA-ESC is about to be made. The protagonists challenge the emerging supercomputer with issues like: class segregations, rules of art making, and spirituality. These questions seem like they are very important for the future developments of the global IT sector. Also, they are considered to be the most difficult ones and challenging for the super computer. But, SILICA-ESC responds with ease. By emitting audio, visual and scent impulses, she mesmerizes her first public users.
The movie is created by writing code and designing a software environment, which can generate high number of variations and visual material in short periods of time. All the visual material is generated by working with computer language Processing.
While doing this movie, the author worked with a variety of supercomputer clusters and High Performance Computing systems consisting of high number of processors. This movie remixes works of Jean Luc Godard (Weekend), Velimir Khlebnikov (Radio of the Future), Fyodor Dostoyevsky(Notes from the Underground), and Caspar David Friedrich(artist’s quotes).

This is a fully functional Commodore 64 laptop created by Benjamin Heckendorn using actual hardware, specifically the C64C motherboard which was one of the last and smallest revisions. It uses a Gamecube power supply in place of the original power brick.

Benjamin Heckendorn’s Blog

Btw…. Who wanna buy my MacBook Pro ?

Pretty cool, eh? – So, pampig people, swing the chopper!

Check out more pics in his Flicker-Gallery.

- Ich sollte doch unnötige Flash-Online-Spiele exserzieren, Sir! ”

“Klickn, Paula, klickn! Ein Klimmzug, Paula, klicken Sie schon!”

http://www.aspirant.nu