Raphaël @raphael@post.lurk.org

Hello Lurkers, it’s time for a brief #introduction. I am raphaël, born in montpellier, studied art in brussels, living in paris. I usually write small systems with code or physical objects, that eventually become instruments, tools, or less functional things. I love cooking without cookbooks and I usually write code the same way. I am a free software user and enthusiast. I teach art and design in various schools and during workshops. I am part of @velvetyne and prepostprint.org. I am currently (04/2021) focused on #sound and #CSS as a #livecoding language, and I still maintain lots of tiny tools that I should list somewhere at some point. Procrastination is part of my creative process and I kind of handle it now. I have a post-punk band called zone and a debian computer called jardin.

For a web page commission containing videos, I have the choice between hosting the video files on the project’s server with a plain HTML video player or hosting it on a Peertube instance. I wonder what are the downsides of the first. I know Peertube works very well.
I am aware HTML videos can’t adapt their quality according to the client’s bandwidth. Peertube means taking care of an instance or being dependant to an existing one. Anything else?

HfG Karlsruhe is looking for a graphic design teacher. Very cool school! https://hfg-karlsruhe.de/en/aktuelles/professur-fuer-kommunikationsdesign-und-digitale-praktiken-m-w-d-bes-gr-w3-66/

…and by doing so, she fixed an old, annoying bug.

My mom is updating Ubuntu with no fear. I am a proud son.

Are we about to enter one of these moments where human art will have to bounce on a revolutionary technique (AI) and create a new artistic language, very distinguishable from what machines can do?

I played with CSS paint by @grantcuster
https://css-paint.constraint.systems/p/38019607-03a9-43cf-b476-f440448f1fc4

In 2016 I made an art installation about keyframes and what is between them. I choose the eyes of the program xeyes as subject for my demonstration. I think I wanted to create a link between software folklore and visual arts, or at least with a public interested in art. I think I failed. https://raphaelbastide.com/huxtable/

I am wondering if our sensibility to images will change with the rise of AI made imagery. Could it be similar to our relationship to handcrafted object / machine made object? Or maybe something more radical, like a wish for some of us to ignore / ban AI made graphics? That last scenario would require some tagging mechanism. Except DALL-E 2 signature (colored squares in the bottom right corner), I don’t know if any tagging / metadata exists yet.

Update of https://fungal.page/
(patience and scroll…)

I asked my friend Jérémy Landes to collaborate on the design of a libre font forked from DejaVu Sans, able to spread like mycelium thanks to the variable technology. It is named “Fungal Sans” and it is available for download at https://fungal.page (still wip).

Wikipedia is not perfect (lack of diversity, moderation…) and it remains a fragile system. Still, I wanted to picture it as a post-human vestige, an artifact invaded by biomorphic figures and spreading typography. My work quickly focused on how to create organic ornaments, affecting the encyclopedia’s interface, its typography, the figures and the Wikipedia logo itself.

Fanzines are defined as “non-official publications produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon”. Now “fanzines” also include niche art publications made within a small economy, close to what artist’s books are, but I wanted to go back to the original role of the fanzine: Fungal is a homage to Wikipedia, one of the greatest website of the World Wide Web. This collaborative encyclopedia is now 21 years old, and I am still fascinated how it changed our relationship to knowledge. It also represents a comforting example of what humanity can do: collaborating voluntarily on the largest knowledge project in our history. I consider Wikipedia being the descendant of Enlightenment’s encyclopédistes and free software movement, and I think such project made by the people, for the people are beautiful remains of the early Web’s utopia.