A short entry about "Drawing with Code"

Intending to return to "Drawing with Code" at the deCordova (which is generally an excellent museum, I've never gone there and been bored); they gave us two free passes thanks to the issues with the shuttles.

Got two copies of the catalog, which at $3.95 has got to be the cheapest exhibit catalogue EVER. Nifty looking. It looks like a stack of punchcards, and except for two accordion sections, that's basically what it is. The display font is I think an old OCR one or maybe VT-100, it looks familiar anyway. I took some pictures because the museum doesn't have any pictures on their website. They'll give you as good a sense as images can taken by a lazy person using PhotoBooth on their Mac and a piece of masonite using available window light can.

There's a first page card, an essay accordion, a checklist of all works in the show (dammit I want to get ahold of those animations), then "figures" of some of the works in the show, and a last card with info on programs at the museum about the show (not mentioning the event at MIT which they do mention on the website and which I want to go to).

They were also showing a documentary on computer art published by Siggraph 1999 which I find myself wanting, but knowing Siggraph, it probably costs three SID chips and a firstborn child. Oh well, can watch it all the way through when we go back.

This is old hat to a lot of people, but to me to see the ancestors of demos in a gallery, and see ASCII art on a wall . . . . it makes my brain explode. The idea of something I just think of as fun and geekily wowzing genuinely having artistic legitimacy . . . I had inklings already for a variety of reasons, but it hadn't really hit home.

More than the events I've organized (or am organizing) in Montréal, more than @party itself and all the people showing up (which made me happy), this made me realize that I'm not wasting my time. And I can't quite articulate why yet.

I'm glad I got sucked into the demoscene before I really knew about the artistic legitimacy and history of computer art; I mean, I knew about some of the animation side of it because of what R showed and taught me, but that was it. Far different experience watching something on Youtube and standing there in a gallery. It just makes finding out that much more awesome.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the Cyberarts Festival.