Re: [-empyre-] empyre - what is it all good for?

[Adam Nash <adam@yamanakanash.net>]

Hello Roya,

First of all, congratulations on your piece, it is quite beguiling and 
lovely. Please tell us more about the processes (mental and technical) 
involved in its creation.

> not a lot of discussion subjects I feel invited to join. It's all very 
> specific, and in many ways
> way to specific for me.

Please introduce the subjects you feel like discussing. Indeed, it can be 
very intimidating to speak up when it seems like other people are so much 
more dominant, especially with the weighty discussions that have kicked off 
this month. But rest assured, if you feel like discussing something in 
particular, then its your right to simply bring it up - that is exactly 
what this forum is for. For myself, the opportunity to discuss several 
different aspects of Web3D as art with other practitioners is so rare that 
I intend to take as full advantage of it as I can in the time available to 
us. As for self-promotion, John answered your concerns admirably, but I 
want to add that we all have been *invited* to this forum, and I personally 
would love to hear from as many of the artists as possible. In my posts, I 
have specifically asked for the opinions of the other artists, because I 
really want to hear what they have to say. I'm here to learn :-)

I would be very interested to hear much more about your interest in Islamic 
art and its interaction between text and image. I also am very interested 
in this, although my knowledge is meagre, so I would love to hear how it 
figures in your work. Simon seems to be quite knowledgeable about this too.

> neither have a PC, not mentioning the resources and all those exotic
> plug-ins I'm required to install (if I would have a PC). I personally find
> all these requirements for viewing very irritating and annoying,

A relevant point, but your piece is in Flash - isn't that just another 
'irritating and annoying' plug-in that is required to be installed?

> I personally prefer work that is accessible for the broader public and simple
> in it's technical and ideological requirements.

One person's simple is another person's complicated - I personally find 
Flash to be one of the most technically and ideologically heinous 
technologies currently at large.

> when I'm personally so not a friend of big RAM landscapes and that particular
> genre of digital arts. I feel like the fly on the wall here.

It's not all about big RAM landscapes :-) Having said that, though, its 
true that my piece is not practicably *audible* on a Macintosh (Mac users 
can *see* it no problems, but not hear it) because it uses MP3 files. 
Ironically, this was a decision to keep the RAM requirements down, but at 
the moment if a Mac running Cortona wants to hear it, I'll need to post a 
WAV version. Your mail has inspired me to actually do this, as I have been 
meaning to for quite some time. The irony is pretty rich though. But, 
that's the breaks with this kind of technology. On the other hand, my 
computer, a PC, is about 4 years old, so its hardly cutting edge :-)

For what it's worth, my piece does run on a Pentium 1 machine with 48Mb RAM 
- granted it is very jerky and slow, but so is your piece on the same machine.

Looking forward to hearing from you, and all the other artists in this 
year's Web3DArt show.

Regards,
Adam