First published on [Substack}(https://open.substack.com/pub/generative/p/doing-nothing-creative-freedom-and?r=58kr3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)

Creativity is the fragrance of freedom. - OSHO

Hello fellow readers and greetings to all who have recently come across this newsletter. I appreciate your support through reading this little newsletter in light of so many other interesting things out there.

So a few thoughts I’ve been thinking about recently …

Individualism is a complex concept with many facets and profound implications for our psyche. The freedom it offers is particularly cherished by artists and those displaying creativity.

Our unique voice—whether it represents our creative expression, legacy, style, or literal speech—is always eager to be heard. However, many struggle to overcome the barriers to public display, often due to fear of criticism or self-doubt about the quality of their work.

Despite these obstacles, a desire for recognition continues to flicker within us. We yearn to be unique, to leave a legacy that resonates, rather than merely shouting into a void heard only by ourselves. But should that be enough?

Who wants their style to be copied? Many artists detest the concept and technology of AI art because it encroaches on their unique style. This sentiment was evident in the Writer’s Guild strike of 2023. Artists demand recognition and fair compensation for their work.

At the same time, there’s a collective aspect to consider. Think of a national anthem, an artistic movement, or even a sitcom like Schitt’s Creek. These shared experiences could be seen as cultural memes or tropes that hint at a deeper collective intuition.

When discussing the collective from a utilitarian moral perspective, it raises the question of how the individual and the group should balance each other. In other words, how can one express their individuality without harming the collective or stifling deep personal expression?

Hope you have a wonderful week and I look forward to be able to increase the frequency of this newsletter soon again.

Peace and love,

Chris RIed

mu Muology - Dark Matters

Created by Jon Butt the µ Muography device is an experimental DIY particle detector, built in his studio during Melbourne’s lockdown over 2020/2021. Engineered using freely available open-source tools, modified electronics and hand-built circuitry, the device detects high speed cosmic particles (muons) as they rain down to earth.

Really interesting project which can or could be used as a way to produce a more pure randomization factor. The webcam they use to detect these particles is an interesting read here. It was part of a larger exhibit called DARK MATTERS with the Arts at CERN.

Pave

Pave is a environment-agnostic toolkit specialized for manipulating SVG/Path2D curves, which includes creating primitives, calculating positions/normals/tangents, offsetting, and resampling paths. All of the API are provided in a functional programming manner, and the path data is represented as an immutable plain object.

Does heavily use Bezierjs and Paperjs. As an inspiration, but if you create SVG for plotting this might be a library you will want to check into and see if it would fit in your mailbox.

Cables 2024 Release

Cables is a tool for creating beautiful interactive content.With an easy to navigate interface and real time visuals, it allows for rapid prototyping and fast adjustments.

Can I Remake Super Mario World in Godot?

I want to get into game development and learn to use Godot - and coming from a ROM hacking background, I thought it’d be a nice warmup project to recreate Super Mario World in Godot. Will I succeed? You won’t find out in this video, because all I really get to is the very fine details of player physics!

Music Blocks

Music Blocks is an interactive Web Application — the interaction is done via basic mouse events like click, right click, click and drag, etc. and keyboard events like hotkey press. The application is audio-visual; it produces graphics artwork and music.

or another application you might want to look into if the Scratch interface is a little too childlike, but sometimes its when we play like a child we come across deep intuition.

NoiseCraft

NoiseCraft is an open source, visual programming language and platform for sound synthesis and music making, with the goal of creating a community for the open exchange of musical ideas. The design is loosely inspired by PureData, Max/MSP as well as other visual programming languages. NoiseCraft is built on technologies such as the Web Audio and Web MIDI APIs, and runs in a web browser. The plan is for the app to remain free to use and ad-free for the foreseeable future. (Github)

Using StableDiffusion to Create a Pointcloud 3D Effect

In this tutorial, we are going to look at a method to simulate a Pointcloud model in Touchdesigner based on a StableDiffusion output.

Just a bit of inspiration on how one might use StableDiffusion in other creative ways.

Airfoil - A Tutorial

The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling.

Really a tutorial on which a number of interesting flight dynamics can be used to generate interesting and satisfying visuals if you take the time.

How Photographs Were Transmitted by Wire (1937)

Dramatization of how photographs are transmitted by wire, an exciting new technology in the 1930s.

I think sometimes we forget how much technology has been around for a long time. It helps to keep us grounded and perhaps motivational in order to help us understand the progress we have made in aggregate and yet at the same time how early the transmission of information has been around.

Books

How To Do Nothing - Jenny Odell

Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily.

I found this to be a book that does a great job at taking popular self-help “getting away from social media” and coming up with a different take on why questioning the attention economy from the perspective of an artist. It is well weaved with history and art and has a spattering of undertones about present cultural context and insights from the past to inform how the future might be built.

Website | Instagram | Youtube | Behance | Twitter | BuyMeACoffee