Archive for the 'blog' Category



I’m just finishing up another trip to Savannah, GA. It’s Art & Technology Week here at the Telfair Museum. I participated in two programs, a workshop at the Moses Jackson Community Center and a demo for high school students at the Jepson Center. Haeyoung Kim (who performs under the name bubblyfish) also spoke. [...]

Simplicity

In the interest of trying to lead my life according to my recent minor obession: John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity, I have decided to start off the Spring semester with a little bit of law 1: Reduce.
So out with http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/the-nature-of-code/
and in with http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/nature/
and out with http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/programming-from-a-to-z/
and in with http://www.shiffman.net/teaching/a2z/.
Apologies if this makes your browsing temporarily [...]

The Garden

It’s been a while since I published a new work. But there’s nothing like a deadline. A year ago, I installed three of my works at the Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, GA. Since the installation was set to run for three years, it seemed like a nice, altogether reasonable [...]

ITP Show

Another semester draws to an end with a terrific selection of projects at the ITP show!

There’s also a scrumptious video blog as well as a lovely Rocketboom episode.

Moviemaker Update

I’ve updated the Processing moviemaker library. Implemented more codecs and I think I fixed the Intel Mac bugs (but no way to tell since I don’t have one.) Hopefully nothing else broke in the process. Anyone reading this on an intel mac or windows machine, please test and let me know, thanks! [...]

A first pass at my Neural Networks in processing tutorial is ready for public consumption. So, before you go and consume a turkey, consume this link. And let me know if it makes any sense at all. . .? The examples are still trivial — Linear classification, Solving XOR [...]

Java Freedom Fries

Is it a penguin? A tooth? A surfer from the future? Whatever it is, this announcement sure does make me happy. Read more about it at Create Digital Motion, one of my new favorite blogs!

view applet and source
So after a fierce battle with my own neurons, I am ready to release part II of my Processing series: “Neural Network! Huah! What is it good for? (Sing it again, now.)”
This example implements a multi-layered neural network that learns via “back propogation.” It’s specifically trained to solve XOR. [...]

Perceptron

view applet and source
Long overdue, I’ve started working on a series of

The Human Connection

An article about ITP was published yesterday in the New York Sun. Now, I’m no fan of this newspaper (see their editorials, which I couldn’t bear to read), but they do have excellent arts coverage, and they did capture ITP quite well. But did I really say this?
“Ultimately, it’s about the human [...]