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Vida The library contains code that is a part of the materials I prepared for 4-days workshops session concerning - roughly speaking - the intersection of culture and computer programming. The workshops took place in the HAT Research Center (https://artandsciencestudies.com). The main idea of the workshop was finding connections between some particular cultural phenomenons and simple coding, and learning how to describe cultural and artistic 'entities' (inter alia artworks) through the code. Having considered the strategy of the workshop and after several discussions with colleagues at the WRO Art Center (https://wrocenter.pl), where we also use similar strategies, I decided to encapsulate selected part of the code prepared for the workshops into a single p5js library. A large part of the workshop was devoted to reconstructing and playing with ideas taken from early digital, interactive artworks. Due to this fact Vida library is collecting simple routines for camera-based interaction and image-to-text processing - as these techniques was widely used by artists experimenting with digital and conditional media from the beginning of the 'digital age'. In other words: the workshop was focused on finding places to embed code in the culture (and vice versa). So the main idea behind this library was to develop a mechanism, which will allow you to easily create reproductions of existing - on field of the digital arts - artistic techniques and strategies by simple coding, but also develop them or try to understand deeper by the the reverse engineering (and modyfying code inside the library). Currently Vida includes a code (and examples) that allows you to create works based on simple motion detection (referring slightly to early experiments by Myron Krueger [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_W._Krueger]), image-to-text processing (inspired by the famous Ascii Art Ensamble [https://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/ascii/aae.html]) and a variation on a classic interactive installation 'Text Rain' by Romy Achituv and Camille Utterback [https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=109552]. Vida in it's present form is a 'proof of concept'. In the future should be supplemented with code and examples, presenting more techniques of using the camera as a sensor or - broader looking at the case - as a base of some aesthetic phenomenon. Limitations: not every WWW browser allows you to use video camera. For best results try Firefox or Chrome. Online examples (currently Firefox only): ascii art motion detector variation on 'Text Rain' To download early-release package: click here
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HAT Research Center
WRO Art Center
