art with code

2010-04-28

Early (and recent) computer art

VISUAL AESTHETICS IN EARLY COMPUTING (1950-80) (via Trivium)

It's the demoscene, 50s-style!

Or maybe something akin to modern dance with a webcam-operated CFD backdrop.

Speaking of the demoscene, here are a couple recent productions:

Fairlight Cncd - Agenda Circling Forth. Millions of particles. Nice forest scene.



Farbrausch - fr-043: rove. Good ambience.



United Force & Digital Dynamite - Wir sind Einstein. See also The Golden Path for more trippiness.



I do wonder if we'll ever have user interfaces with those kinds of production values. The recent trend has been to lock the GUI down so hard that you can't even change the theme, sometimes you can't even change the colors (OS X, I'm looking at you.) On the other hand, web browsers seem to be picking up some easy themeability with those background-image themes of Chrome and Firefox. Squeeze creativity out from one place and it goes to another.

But still. There aren't many GUIs that look nice and fun. Well, except in games. In games they're the selling point. The fancier and better your game GUI looks (i.e. the thing we call "graphics"), the better your game will sell. It's all about the experience, the fancy wrapping around the game logic crack cocaine. Sure, you want to _play_ the game, but having the process of doing that look and feel awesome makes the experience so much better.

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