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Handhelds Hardware

"Tap" Palm Art at The Whitney's Artport 70

Posted by timothy from the love-the-cheerleaders dept.
technogamy writes: "Art.geeks -- check out The Whitney Museum of American Art's Artport, a 'portal to net art and digital arts, and an online gallery space for commissioned net art projects.' Note specifically Jim Buckhouse's Tap--part of Creative Time's Beaming Network, Tap's collaborative, evolving, quirky app hops on to your Palm-based device through a sleek silver beaming cube. (I freaked out when I saw one of the cubes at a local Barnes and Noble ... especially when I realized that I knew the person who made them. ;]) Here's how Tap works. Get some culture, people!"
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"Tap" Palm Art at The Whitney's Artport More

"Tap" Palm Art at The Whitney's Artport

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  • So it's just a game. What's the big deal?

  • Not anything new (Score:1, Interesting)

    by arrow ( 9545 )
    Basicly just a game thats tied into a museum. "Beaming Stations" have been around for quite a while now and are quite popular where the pointy haired bosses gather in large numbers. Something about trading business cards and product info... personaly I like the paperware and the cool bags vendors give you.

    Anyway, back on track. Has anyone built a "Beaming Station", and posted info on how?

  • I saw 2 of the cubes... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Artifice_Eternity ( 306661 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:40AM (#3179994) Homepage
    ...at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in Manhattan, yesterday. Each one has a Palm-OS device mounted inside, with the screen exposed, showing a simple animated loop. In this case, one showed the outline of a man dancing, the other showed a woman dancing.

    They had the rough, looped quality of an early kinematograph, or whatever those things are called (where you rotate the wheel and look through the slits to see the horse running). The softly glowing blue light in each cube was the port for beaming the artwork on to your own PDA. Cool stuff.

    Of course, I saw something like this two years ago. I was working on a film set, and all the guys with Palms were beaming it to each other -- a short animation of a naked woman. Nothing like pr0n to define the bleeding edge of technology. :)

  • "... through a sleek silver beaming cube. (I freaked out when I saw one of the cubes at a local Barnes and Noble ..."
    I dont get it either.. i find this cubething interesting.. but i cant find info on it.. whats the big deal here?
    is it cause it is 3 in the morning here and i am trying to debug in MIT scheme,,,
    ok here is the deal: Tap is a Palm-based wireless project offering male and female animated characters that "learn" tap dancing by taking lessons, practicing, giving recitals and learning from each other. While digital media allows for perfect replication of data, Tap emphasizes the process of repetition with a difference. It treats digital data not only as reproducible packets of information, but as seeds for new ideas that spread and evolve. As an artwork that relies on exchange, learning processes and community, it becomes a metaphor for networked communication itself.
    back to scheme now... :-P
  • Break dancing on my PDA! Maybe "east-vs-west" competitions via IR between two PDAs.

    My computing device could break and I wouldn't be mad.

    :)

  • great reason to go to the Whitney (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ism ( 180693 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @02:55AM (#3180020)
    The Whitney is running a biennial [whitney.org] which is showcasing some of today's most notable artists. I was really excited to see a lot of internet installations. There are several computer terminals in the exhibition space pointed towards websites, and there are some more complicated ones with projection installations and other gizmos. I think the /. crowd would really appreciate seeing them treated as high art. I always believed it was (more in terms of literary theory though, but that's another story).

    The rest of the exhibit is really nice. There is a comic book influence in several installations, and there's a whole gallery for Chris Ware of Acme Novelty Library Fame. There are some performance artists and I suggest scheduling your visit to catch them. When I went, Karin Campbell was performing "When I Close My Eyes" and it was a really surreal experience.

    If you have never seen contemporary art before, this is one of the best examples of what's out there and I highly urge you to go. If you're not near Manhattan, I also suggest MOCA in Los Angeles and SFMOMA in San Francisco.
  • Just my two cents that came up wilst reading this...

    There is an art that's actually quite nice which oyou could consider practicing - Tap Dance. I'm talking about REAL tapdance that actualy involves lifting your ass of that officechair and learning to move somewhat elegant. (Not THAT easy btw.)

    These little gadgets are as much art in comparsino to - for an instance - tap dance as typing HTML is to real programming.

    ...I could go on but you get my point.
    Like I said, just my two cents for this monday morning.

  • Art for geeks, it's there! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @06:42AM (#3180327)
    My 0,022 on this subject. Why aren't geeks more interested in art? It seems to me many pople think that unless it's displayed on a screen or Palm, it' not worth watching. Well, take a trip to the Guggenheim museum (Located in NY, Las Vegas, Bilbao and Berlin) and get ready to experience some "real" art. I kid you not, it's beautiful. I visit the Bilbao Guggenheim at least twice a year, and the different exhibitions are always stunningly beautiful and interesting.

    As for the geek side of art, I think artists are hackers in the same way as IT hackers. The strive to explore, research and often apply pedantic measures to get thing right. They expand their own minds and challenge the audience's mind. Sometimes they are hackers to, just watch the LED columns in the Bilbao Guggenheim. Fascinating, beautiful, cool.

    And what about your home? When I was a kid, I had a poster for Tallgrass backup systems on my wall, because the leopard on it was cool. Now I'm and adult and want som art on the wall. It's not difficult. I have four artworks in a small apartment; One oil on canvas, one print, one litography and latex on clear plastic. Art is so much different things, something I'm trying to tell you here. In other terms, I have one horrendusly expensive original painting only one in existence, one framed dirt-cheap colour copy, one advanced numbered hand-crafted copy, and one anime cel. :) Art is so many things, most of them beautiful and often cool. Now go out there an nail a painting to yer wall! :)

    • I think this is an over generalization. My experience is that, outside of my arty friends, my geek friends were the only ones that had been to the National Art Gallery in Ottawa. I used to go pretty regularily (they have some great relaxation rooms). When the Renoir exhibit was in, I snuck my digital camera in and took some snaps.

      Also, one of the geekiest Mac mofo's I knew in university was taking a minor in art (major in CS) and created some of the most brilliant paintings of anyone I've known in person.

      So, I really don't see where you're at. Sure, many geeks don't partake in art. Many people don't either. I don't see a trend.
      • This isn't art, it's animating drawings.
        • Yeah, I realize. We weren't talking about this. We were talking about real art. Like at the Guggenheim, in the National Art Gallery in Ottawa and the paintings my friend made while taking an art minor. I still don't see a trend of geeks shunning art. My experience is that geeks are more interested than non-geek-non-artists, although there are a lot of noninterested people in both groups.
    • Now go out there an nail a painting to yer wall! :)

      You mean like the 4 foot by 6foot oil painting that I have a bitch of a time finding a good space for when I move?? Or do you mean the other assorted paintings and drawings that I've collected over time, or one of the thousands of photos that I've taken? (you know you're hardcore when the clerk at the commercial photo shop you get your pictures developed at apologizes for not remembering your name when you walk in).

      Most of the techies I know tend to have a higher appreciation of art than most of the non-techies I know. (( In truth, many of us will qualify our description of a piece of code as 'beautiful', or 'a piece of art'. This is not meant as a denigration other art forms, but rather an expression of an active asthetic sense)).

  • change in perception of computers? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18, 2002 @07:50AM (#3180433)
    From a historical perspective, technology is usually created to serve a utilitarian purpose, but later is used for self expression. The computer has been undergoing a gradual change since the first personal computer was available. Even if the app doesn't impress me, this just another step in the maturation process of computer technology.

    Paper was orginally created for writing, but now it has a plethora of uses. Same would go for most other technologies. When rubber and latex were invented, few people thought an artist would use it as a medium, let alone play things of varying uses. Another manifestation of the maturation process is case modification and the new iMac. Computers started out as tools to make things like art, but now they are rapidly becoming art. The participation of computers in the process of art is changing and evolving.

  • why i opt for net.art? dot makes the difference... (Score:3, Informative)

    by marcell ( 99473 ) on Monday March 18, 2002 @08:52AM (#3180589) Homepage Journal
    there are a lot of net.artists which works are hard to find in galleries, and who themselves (more or less) call net.artists and that dot makes the difference...

    its work usually digs into political issues and specific issues of the media itself (net part of the net.art coin) rather then playing in the field of aesthetics and continuum of ugly and beautiful... media hacks are better thain paintings... just to start a little flamewar :)

    links sometimes worths kilowords:
    http://www.calarts.edu/~line/history.html [calarts.edu]
    http://rtmark.com [rtmark.com]
    http://www.irational.org [irational.org]
    http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk [ljudmila.org]

    and few others in tribute to net.art: interview with the hacker [thecroatianews.com]... work in progress...
  • ... they called it the Tamagotchi, and we all got over it quickly. Then someone came along with too much free time and a postmodern vocabulary and refigured the social lattice-work of the Tamagotchi construction, subtly shifting the deixis from cheap kids' fad to artsy fad. Ye Gods, where are the sarcastic lampoonists of suck.com when the world needs their bull-fighting superpowers? I can just see Terry Colon's desaturated cartoons depicting an art disciple in black beret fidgeting over his key-chain pocket monster trying to teach it new dance steps with which to "challenge" and "trade fours" with some ten-year-old's ubermonsterdancer.
  • Every 'beam station' I've ever seen is built with the unfortunate side effect of restricting Handspring PDA's from using it.

    There really is a drawback to having yout IR port on the side.

  • Am I the only old timer around here? This Tap program for the Palm reminds me a lot of the Dancing Demon [simology.com] program for TRS-80, written in Basic by Leo Christopherson.

    Good (?) game concepts don't die. They just reappear in the weirdest places.

    -- SysKoll

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