It's christmas holidays and finally there's some time to catch up on reading. Amongst the finest things I've encountered has to be an article on Lewis Mumford written by Mikko Rask. Mumford took a pragmatic view on technology and had some fine things to promote: artisan skills in technology, non-instrumentalism, self-expression through work and so forth. He labeled these downright utopistic virtues polytechnics as opposed to monotechnics which are mechanic, totalitarian, central planned and forced to the workers.

Having looked at the way things are in the corporate computer technology world, I think there's a lot we could do with a handicraftsman attitude torwards computer skills. Indeed, Mumford's conception of polytechnics vividly reminds me of hacker ethics and open source software contrasted to the monotechnics governments and the industry are trying to promote.

The article is in the essay collection "Näkökulmia teknologiaan", published by Gaudeamus in 2000. Mumford himself has written a lot of books; I think I'm trying to get "Myth of the Machine" in my hands first.

Antti S

The Media Lab of University of Art and Design Helsinki are holding a demo day tomorrow 11.12. Markku Reunanen will be there presenting The Yellow Rose of Texas as well as his Assembly'03 intro Leeko.Click here for more info.

Antti S

The road cameras are making a slight comeback to celebrate the Amfibio christmas window at Vaasankatu 7. Watch how ordinary surroundings transform into christmasy colours as witnessed on the screenshots below! The screen should be visible after dark today.

Antti S, Petri L

The television/MSX/feedback visuals at Taidehalli are up and running, and will be all week. Also, Pauli O has kindly filmed and edited some document clips of the event; to see them, head to gallery.

Antti S

I didn't see this one coming... Some visuals of mine will be shown at Taidehalli Helsinki to support Kokeellisen Elektroniikan Seura during their music performances 27.11. - 7.12. The catch is, the visuals were programmed for a SVI-728 MSX. A Spectravideo MSX. 20 years old. With some ugly space age looks. And 100 percent Z80 assembler! There's no doubt about it: I'm retro again!! Anyway, do check it out. First performance thursday 27.11. at 18:00. I'll be there banging the SVI keyboard and using some video mixer and cameras, and of course the Kokeellisen Elektroniikan Seura's performance should be quite bizarre. I'm looking forward to hearing them live myself.

As a standard procedure, here's the screenshots. The Nintendo sprites were nicked from Shyguy Kingdom.

Antti S

As advertised, Pseudotoad managed to visualise some Dcom and Eliot Ness at Entropy 10 v (screenshots located below). Other beautiful visual sets of the hall by Markus Pasula and Mikko Mononen aka Droid/MFX and Memon/Moppi. Their visuals were a true hit, especially the anthropomorphic audiosynchronized robots of Moppi. This reminds me that thousands of people have always loved watching realtime demos. It is obvious there is bound to be heaps the concept could offer the club environments.

Antti S

Be sure to check out the big Amfibio set at E10V, the Entropy ten years party held at VR Makasiinit, Helsinki, the first of November. Petri L, Antti S and Pauli O from Pseudotoad should be there as well as some very special demoscene guests.

Antti S

What would you do with multimedia art but make it a chillout zone on a 70s themed friday night student party? Six television sets and a yoghurt screen by Pseudotoad, a fine dia projector set by Antti Ahonen of Amfibio and bell bottoms, afro wigs and disco shirts by the visitors. There's screenshots of the Antti S set, titled 'the threat of sociobiology', below. Aside from that we also engaged in some camera feedback/frame slice psychedelia torwards the end of the night, but unfortunately, it was once again left undocumented.

Antti S

The flower effect by Antti S as seen in The Yellow Rose of Texas 4k intro and several VJ gigs has been contributed to the Vida 6.0 Art & Artificial Life International Competition by Antti S and Markku Reunanen. A big thanks goes to Pauli O for editing the documentary of the effect and Jarkko Rotstén for providing some audio. There's a brand new version of the effect, now bearing the title Algorithmic Rose, written especially for this occasion. Here's some screenshots to see for starters.

Antti S

Sequences of asphalt ambience were projected by the Pseudotoad people to the show window of Vaasankatu 7 during the nights 29.-30.9. and 6.-7.10. Screened via a custom piece of software written for an upcoming collaboration with the Harmaa Vyöhyke project by CNCD Finland, nothing much is documented at the moment but screenshots. Installation audio kindly provided by CNCD and vibrated through the window with a sound bug.

Antti S

Antti Silvast and Markku Reunanen contributed their 4k intro The Yellow Rose Of Texas to Assembly 2003, placing first! With size optimization magic and a soft-synth by Markku along with Antti S visuals on top of Antti S music, the flowery metamorphoses took their audience by a storm. Pick your OS to see: Linux, OS X, Windows, SGI(!) and for the curious, the source code in plain C. You might also want to check the audience commentary in pouet.net.

Antti S

Pseudotoad Laboratories website is beginning to be up and running!
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