What I’m Working on Right Now

Morpheus: Biblionaut

This now page shares what’s occupying my time at the moment. If you have your own website, you might want to create one as well. Learn more about me or read my CV.

 I’m happy to see Morpheus: Biblionaut (2009) once again. I wrote the music to this piece of trippy electronic fiction many years ago. But it was lost with the death of Flash. Aaron Miller recently did the hard work of preserving this on YouTube and it’s now viewable. Credit also to the piece’s original authors, Travis Alber and William Gillespie.

At one point I attempted to preserve Morpheus: Biblionaut using Rhizome’s Conifer to make a runnable archive. It mostly works but the sound is unfortunately unreliable.

Yorba

I’m currently working as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Yorba. We were recently covered in TechCrunch and Yahoo! News and received a lot of traffic! check out “Yorba’s service is like Mint for uncluttering your entire digital life;” it’s a great article.

We’re looking to work with people interested in Self-Sovereign Identity, Clojure, and decentralized storage. Get in touch if that describes you or someone you know.

Beyond the Frame

There have been several updates to Beyond the Frame. First off, you’ll notice the new logoLogo For Beyond the Frame The new Beyond the Frame logo, a work-for-hire by [Alma Gianarro](https://almagianarro.com*).The Beyond the Frame Logo by Alma Gianarro is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   

 in the upper right-hand corner. That logo was introduced in a new essay called “Untangling Non-Linearity.” This essay considers the direct and indirect impact of the humble linked list on culture and computation.For those of you new to the concept, the linked list is a way to associate data in computer memory. The incredible flexibility of this simple concept is part of a zeitgeist that spans everything from films edited by Walter Murch, the dawn of Artificial Intelligence, and even the World Wide Web’s hyperlink.

“Taste of 2023” is full of my personal reflection on a year of arts (such as The Soft Moon), travel (including my trip to Strange Loop), and meditation.

Beyond the Frame’s “On the Internet, We Are Either Artists or Bureaucrats” (2020/2024) was mentioned by Joe Hallenbeck’s in both “Small Web” and “Disinformation Theory” on Joe’s Digital Garden. Hallenbeck observes in response:

A bureaucrat, however, is a slave to the machine. They opine because it is required – favorite, retweet, boost and register their engagement in the most formal and banal of processes. Shouting into the void is not the basis for a community.

I wrote an update for “On the Internet, We Are Either Artists or Bureaucrats” (#licklider) to build on Joe’s thoughts.

It was a pleasant surprise to have “Notes from Ambient Church” (2020/2024) mentioned in On an Overgrown Path; Overgrown Path has long been a favorite blog of mine. As a response, I updated “Notes from Ambient Church” with an addendum to address how encoding music as notation ensured that classical music would endure. But at the same time this practice has seemingly placed limits on what is acceptable within the genre.

A gift shop was recently added to Gallery 404.Gallery 404 is a gallery that exhibits net.art as it appears today. It deals exclusively in broken art. See my announcement of its launch in 2020.

 I’m very excited about this development. From the press release:

Gallery 404, an online art gallery dealing exclusively in broken net.art artworks, has opened a gift shop spotlighting the significance of the digital commons. The shop features a handpicked selection of multimedia works that use permissive licenses.

The creative commons play a vital role in preserving our shared culture. As such, the online shop is offering visitors a carefully curated collection of extremely non-rare and fully intact artifacts by artists and scientists such as Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Amos Kennedy, and the team responsible for putting people on the moon.

Reading

My reading list is overflowing, as usual. I recently finished Artforum by César Aira (2020), Pauline Oliveros’ Quantum Listening (2022), Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (2023), Fielding Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures by Roy Thomas (2000), and A History of the World in 12 Maps by Jerry Brotton (2014). I’m currently juggling these books, amongst a few others:

Recent Memory

PROGRAMme: I have been working with the brilliant folks on the PROGRAMme Research Into the History and Philosophy of Computing project. I’m specifically collaborating on an untitled chapter on software preservation with Elisabetta Mori and Patricia Falcao for an edition edited by Liesbeth De Mol. The preservation of software-based art will form a cornerstone of our thesis.I covered some of these ideas in my presentation at the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at the Polytechnic University of Turin. The video and all related details can be found in Software Preservation in Networked Art on Beyond the Frame.

Cover of “Prophets of Computing: Visions of Society Transformed by Computing” Prophets of Computing: Visions of Society Transformed by Computing, ACM Books/Morgan & Claypool, New York, NY, 2022

Prophets of Computing: My contribution to Prophets of Computing: Visions of Society Transformed by Computing, “Microcomputers for the Masses. Jack Tramiel and Commodore” was published early last year. The physical copy boasts an elegant layout and a fine attention to detail by the book’s editor, Dick Van Lente. My chapter examines the history of mass market information processing devices in the global marketplace leading up to the personal computer. It argues that the machine’s consumerist roots are its defining characteristic - rather than a tool for augmented intelligence, computers are tools for consumption.

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