new Netflix original movie called, "Explosion of the Penis Warriors", fall 2034
Brief History of Code Cartooning
1992: As a cartoonist, I wanted to see my computer make randomly generated comics. It sounded fun and easy. And like the wrong way to do comics.
With books and a laser printer, I learned to code (a little) in PostScript. The idea was: make a grid of panels that resembled comics, using simple shapes and nonsense text. The page above was made by about 600 lines of code. Half of that was for making the words. And it used only 5 shapes: box, circle, line, round-box, and word-balloon.
1993 - 1995: Thrilled with the idea that code itself could write and draw, I kept experimenting with randomly generated comics. I added more elements to the code for art and writing, and did comics for an entertainment tabloid newspaper (Chris Lauer’s Anthem Monthly).
Each month I changed the program to write a different kind of story or panel sequence. Usually the first and last panels were different from the rest. Some readers enjoyed the random digital comics. Others were puzzled, not finding standard stories and punchlines.
The Comics Journal #171 ran a brief write-up on my code comics work.
1996 - 1998: Feeling the limits of a one-page grid, I revised my random comics-making code so that it could allow scripting (random or non-random), varied page layouts, and multiple pages.
Using that new code, I wrote a script to show the program’s various page layout and drawing features. It included some built-in panel types, shapes, figures, and backgrounds. (PDF here.)
1999: I added color, for RAN DUM LOOP. This program ran on a Mac in a gallery. It writes and draws random comics and cartoon art onscreen endlessly.
The colors, compositions, poses, words and sentences change constantly. Because it uses random combinations of many basic parts, you never see the same drawing twice.
1998 - 2003: I wrote code to make little multi-page zines (unpublished) of random digital comics sketches, fragments, and works in progress. These booklets were in black-and-white or color. Some became my reference for making more complete artworks later.
2002-2004: For art competitions and gallery shows, I began writing code to make full-color poster-size art prints (one-copy editions). Acrobat Distiller made (non-random) printable PDF files, from my random source code.
2005: Wanting to share my code art with others led to publishing RAN DUM 1, a 28-page color zine of random digital comics and random digital art prints.
2010 - current: I found print-on-demand online printers (Blurb, Lulu, and PrestoPhoto), where I could print randomly generated full-color sketchbooks. I’ve made 40 sketchbooks, printing one copy each. (So far, about 8000 pages.)
2012 - current: I started a Tumblr blog, “CodeCartooning”, for sharing my code art experiments. I’ve posted pages from my random code art sketchbooks,
2014 - current: I began adding code (Web Audio API) to generate sound in my web-browser based video animations. YouTube channel: poundart1
“Jack Smith: Art Crust of Spiritual Oasis at Artists Space closed a couple of days before I got to town. Had I known of it when I made my travel plans I would have come a couple of weeks earlier. (Normal Love was also playing at the Metrograph on Ludlow St during that time.) The pictures above appeared in the show and I’ve gleaned them from many sources. I don’t know if the short film,Boiled Lobster of Lucky Landlady Lagoon, was shown or if the last pictured frame capture was shown as a still image, but one way or another it was in the show. Any way… it’s all academic now.”
“I have seen the writing on the wall…”
Roger Waters at Hartwall-Areena, Helsinki, Finland: Intermission
21/08/2018
Perhaps more influentially than any artist before or after her, Ana Mendieta’s ambitious, earnest artworks used the body as the central vehicle for navigating a diasporic experience and asserting a syncretic identity in the face of exile and displacement. In Imagen de Yagul (1973) from the series of Siluetas she staged and documented on a trip to Mexico in 1973, she embedded her body directly in the landscape, covered in the very substances that define it, thus staging an evocative doubling in which her body appears both to fuse with and emerge from the earth. The inherent ephemerality and site-specificity of Mendieta’s “earth-body” works force an awareness of the geographic and cultural contexts in which these performances took place—in this case Yagul, an archaeological site in Oaxaca built by the Zapotecs in precolumbian times. These works can be read as part of Mendieta’s attempts to lay claims to her ancestral homelands in Mexico and Cuba, places she incorporates into her own identity through the explicit, almost over-determined embedding of her body. Just as importantly, these stagings are inherently unstable and ephemeral, revealing another, darker side—the potential loss of the body and perhaps the self that such broad-ranging attempts to embrace diaspora can result in. I had the great opportunity to speak with Coco Fusco about Mendieta’s art as part of a boldly political project of cultural diplomacy, an underappreciated element of the artist’s life work after relocating to Iowa from Cuba as a young teenager at the height of the Cold War. “She was a real trailblazer in many ways,” Fusco told me. “As an exiled Cuban artist, she delved into issues and scenarios and situations related to her connection to the island with amazing intensity. She ventured where others didn’t dare. She went back to Cuba when the price for doing so was to be excoriated by other exiles.”
Ana Mendieta, Imagen de Yagul (from the Siluetas Series, Mexico), 1973
I had a weird dream last night and it inspired me to do this. ;w;
I am happy to announce that my art book “Something Wild” with the exclusive alternative cover will be sold at the music event “Tokyo Flat Nightg Carnival: The Final” organized by ORESAMA on the 9th of November. The remaining copies are not large in numbers, so this might be the last chance to buy your copy of it.
But if and only if it won’t be sold out at this event, there is a chance that we could sell it online. I am also considering to keep a few copies for those who can not attend the event. I will let you know the details when I can. 🙏
ニュース💁11月9日のORESAMA主催イベント『TOKYO FLAT NIGHT CARNIVAL THE FINAL』にて、私のアートブック『SOMETHING WILD』が限定カバー付きで販売されます。通販は完売してしまいましたが、この日のために残り少ない在庫を確保しました。どうぞよろしくお願いします🙏🏻
通販についてはその後の在庫次第ですが、今ある分がなくなったら増刷は出来ないので、イベントに来て買ってもらえると確実です。入場者限定ステッカープレゼントもありますのでぜひ！イベント詳細は、ORESAMAのサイトをチェックしてください。 http://www.orsm.jp