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design with numbers
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Design By Numbers is a famous peice of software written by MIT artist/professor John Maeda. For his art he would build custom programs that would take inputs and create the designs based on the algorithms defined in his code.
The greatest achievement of Flash is in it's custom programming language 'Actionscript'. While Director had been offering artists the opportunity to 'design with numbers' for several years before flash, actionscript gave beginners and serious coders a chance to experiment with the power of numbers... and gave birth to a rock star.
Joshua Davis ran a crappy dhtml site called Praystation.com which was mostly dedicated to skateboarding lifestyle & general internet garbage. Being an artist who was beginning to find himself online, he got deeply involved in the ability Flash had to create randomized compositions from code. He began experimenting and sharing his code with others on his redesigned website. He fostered collaborations and encouraged everyone to share in the fun. Being recognized as a catalyst for future online expressions he has become a hot-commodity around the world for those looking to step into the multimedia arena. He'll be in Toronto next month.
Some of Joshua's contemporaries were those responsible for his own inspiration. Yugo Nakamura and Amy Franceschini have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible, not only by using numbers to create interactive experiences, but by taking advantage of the community aspect of the internet. By connecting people together they create a unified experience with deeper signifigance.
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