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    Turning tools into instruments

    June 13, 2012 Gimp, LGRU, MyPaint, Performance, Piksels and lines, playing, Scribus, sound

    The Piksels and Lines Orchestra (PLO)

    If we turned our tools into instruments, could we experience Libre Graphics as an ensemble? What would be the performative potential of lay-out and drawing, and how to listen to the sound of a pixel, or to the tune of a line?

    In response to these curious questions, The Libre Graphics Research Unit developed a prototype for The Piksels and Lines Orchestra. In a single afternoon, several well-known Libre Graphics tools were networked using standard protocols. The ‘Instrumented’ versions of Scribus, MyPaint, SketchSpace and GIMP were made to send their actions (everything that is saved to the undo/redo-history) as HTTP GET requests to The Underweb so that any completed brushstroke, transform or text-change made by the Orchestra’s Instruments would be displayed on a screen. From here, we used Lyd to sonify actions with the help of the LibreOffice sound-effects.
    Simultaneously, Players were saving their results into git. A PureData-patch pulled from the repository and provided ambiant sounds based on processing the outcomes of The Instruments. Finally, through OpenFrameworks, we visualised the growing image-collection on-screen.

    We started thinking about The PLO in the Demonstrating the Unexpected workshop with Brendan Howell

    Pierre Huyghebaert drawing the PLO-diagram

    Multiple visual outputs

    The Orchestra performed two sets of about an hour, exploring the improvised connections between design-production and experimental sound. The differences in tonality of the various instruments were obvious, even if this was just a quick sketch. Scribus proved to be interesting to play; the action-history of this page-lay-out tool is fine-grained, and it’s large variety of operations is clearly defined. The range of sounds produced by MyPaint appeared to be less rich then we expected; to turn a drawing tool into an instrument, it might have been more interesting to take mouse-positions into account. Although exciting because it was the only web-accessible Instrument involved, playing SketchSpace was a little less gratifying due to the high granularity of actions that made it hard to actually perceive causal relations between a change on canvas and it’s sonification.

    Ana Carvalho and Pierre Marchand playing Scribus

    Pippin playing Lyd

    Playing MyPaint while Brendan explains

    Adding sound-feedback to lay-out broke the usual boredom of putting elements to the grid. The pleasure of connecting these different tools through a minimum of negotiation and a maximum of improvisation allowed them to express their character to each other and with each other. Free, Libre and Open Source Design practice will never be the same again :-)

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    ← Design practice, Free Software and feminisms. Fed by and feeding into various activities, networks and collaborations ↓ →

    Affiliations

    • a.pass
    • Active Archives
    • Akademie Schloss Solitude
    • Constant
    • De Geuzen
    • LGRU
    • Libre Graphics Meeting
    • Memory of the world
    • Mondotheque
    • OSP
    • Possible bodies
    • Samedies
    • The Darmstadt Delegation
    • Uncategorized
    • Ustensile
    • xpub

    Links

  • Dragan Espenschied
  • Matthew Fuller
  • b-l-u-e-s-c-r-e-e-n
  • 404: School Not Found
  • De Geuzen: a foundation for multi-visual research
  • Olia Lialina
  • Amateur Archivist
  • Martha Rosler Library
  • Adashboard
  • Consentsus A critical feminist theory of consent
  • SICV Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism
  • El museo del autor
  • artlibre.org
  • Open Font Library
  • Trashwiki
  • Medialab Prado Madrid
  • Automatist
  • Foam
  • Fudge The Facts
  • Femmes et logiciels libres
  • +H+
  • You are here / Vous êtes ici The online guide to Seda-think
  • a.pass
  • <stdin>
  • Urban(e)(istiques) Anomalie(ën)(s) Bru(x)(ss)el(le)(s) through the eyes of Peter Westenberg
  • Missdata
  • Ludivine Loiseau
  • Archive Cultures
  • calligraffiti
  • Libre Graphics Meeting
  • Permutations
  • WVW
  • Speculoos Centre de spécialités graphiques
  • Genderchangers
  • Myriam Cea
  • Memory of the World The world’s documentary heritage belongs to all
  • Scumgrrrls
  • Manufactura Independente
  • aaaaarg
  • OSP-BLOG Open Source Publishing – Graphic Design Caravan
  • BxLUG
  • Revealing Errors We reveal errors that reveal technologies, learning how they affect our lives.
  • Rear Window
  • Sabine Voglaire, Harrisson, Prof Papiko
  • Girls of the internet museum
  • Radio Panik 105.4 fm
  • Open Source Video
  • rmozone Robert Ochshorn
  • Potential Estate The most public secret society inspiring new folk rhymes
  • Towards
  • OSP Open Source Publishing
  • videomagazijn
  • mathieu-g Mathieu Gabiot: Designer Industriel
  • Feral Trade Trading goods along social networks since 2003
  • Constant Verlag A repository of texts from the depth of the Constant Archives
  • Foomarx Reinventing Lorum Ipsum
  • F.A.T.
  • Jeanne van Heeswijk
  • Domainepublic
  • Yi Liang
  • textzi.net
  • – o r a m a
  • Rotor
  • Artwarez Cornelia Solfrank
  • Constant Association for Art and Media
  • Waend A platform for subjective and collaborative spatial publication
  • Copy Cult
  • Hackerspace Brussels
  • http://l-o-c-a-l-h-o-s-t.com/
  • GRAPA A journey to the promised land of FLOS publishing
  • Le Syndicat des Robots
  • LAFKON Publishing
  • Information Observatory
  • Constant Feed

    RSS Constant

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