Stephen Hartzog

Responsible for all programming, design and conceptual development, unless otherwise noted.

Becoming Digital

An Idiosyncratic History in an Evolving medium

Eschewing grand theories of distributed digital media.
Allowing concepts to arise out of experiences in cultural production.

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”
— Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory

  1. Pre-Digital

    1. Pre-Critical Tendencies

    2. Becoming Critical

      • St. John's College, Santa Fe NM
        Reading and discussing “The Great Books of the Western World.”
        Learning to Love Math as a humane activity.
        Discovering Science in a human voice.

    3. Concern for Science

      1. Environmental Science Education
        • Los Alamos National Laboratories
          Students Watching Over Our Planet Earth           (SWOOPE Project)
          Immersion in scientific culture, researching science and history for the purposes of cultural transmission.
          Students building national databases of environmental measurements. “Hands-On” science uses math as a means to understanding your world
          (vs. math as an end-in-itself).
      2. Expanding Interests
        • Content: Philosophy/History/Sociology/Cultural Studies of Science
        • Form: COMIX = DIY, Populist Media
          I’ll use the term NUKES precisely for its lack of definition, in order to evoke, in a single word, a constellation of affects --- science, politics, business, propoganda ...
          - me, 1994

  2. Becoming Digital — Critical HyperMedia

    Desire: to learn the new writing, the language of multimedia.
    · Content driven development = technical experiment + critical content
    · Web media cuts across all disciplines.
    SFSU: wide ranging exploration of University offerings via Special Major.
    1. Nuke Links
      HTML = HyperLinking Enthusiasm
      www.research.nukes
      It's TEXT! HTML is human readable! No fancy software required; low-res, DIY media. The BROWSER (“client”), my new home, my favorite medium.
    2. As If
      HTML/Hypermedia = Text + Image (like comix)
      Interrogating the imagination of Science/Technology, discerning similarities between nukes and general hopes about exotic technologies.
    3. Truths
      JavaScript 1.0 = Events trigger image replacement
      Metaphor: interactive reading = social construction of meaning;
      image replacement = concept replacement.
      Dynamic text: physically interactive nonlinear reading.
      Teacher: brother Jon; in an evolving medium, the amateurs are the experts. Reviewer: Anne Burdick, interested in design + writing.
    4. Nuclear Rocket to the Stars
      JavaScript = Time-based image replacement + random location
      Metaphor: discontinuity of links = enthusiastic anticipation for the unknown in games, space travel; pseudo-interactivity = false hopes.
      Imagination meets scientific aspiration, meets the cold, hard facts of nukes and other mundane realities in space travel.
    5. Messages from Space
      JavaScript = random interactive image replacement + random location
      Metaphors: interactive random images = noise, non-signifying information;
      multiple views of same content = radical contingency of interpretation;
      discontinuity of random links = radical disparity of alien intelligence;
      random image + location = statistical randomness of ionizing radiation.
      The medium is the message in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
      Critique of Dr. Frank Drake’s attempt to communicate with aliens via radiation broadcast into space.
    6. The Real Me
      Multimedia = time-based interactivity
      Metaphor: mouse movement = inquiry into my inner motives.
      The social construction of reality in the age of mass consumption.
    7. Alien Personality Test
      Multimedia = recording & displaying data created by user interaction;
      random sounds + colors.
      Metaphors: arbitray seeming correlations of input/output = interpretation;
      invisibility of recording = surveillance, extrinsic meanings of actions;
      random sound + color = unknowable causality, reality, ontology.
      Plays on the mysterious intelligence behind the surfaces of machines and personality tests. Did you know you were being watched?
      What's random? What's arbitrary? What starts as arbitrary relation becomes historically determined.
    8. Back Talk
      Multimedia = nonlinear interactive video
      “We went back to Chernobyl ...”
      Critique of documentary conventions and of the uses scientific expertise.
      New, interactive multimedia critiques old “new” media (linear, unilateral) by providing textual context and some play.
    9. Museum of Atomic perMutation
      HTML = content + reference
      Metaphors: web site = archive of scientific specimens;
      radiological tracer = semiological tracer.
      M.A.p. collects and constructs stories from across the cultural spectrum about the power of radiation to alter bodies, searching the semiosphere online for information about the effects of ionizing radiation.
    10. Social Art Tactics
      A survey of creative social practices. Participation required. (still)
      Co-taught w/ Max Kelley.
    11. Nukes.org
      “I’ll use the term NUKES precisely for its lack of definition, in order to evoke, in a single word, a constellation of affects --- science, politics, business, propoganda ...”
      Steve Wilson’s Information Arts: intersections of art, science and technology

  3. Work in the Digital Field

    In this rapidly evolving media, work is a means to continuous learning.
    1. George LeGrady: spinning wheel simulation
      First paid work in interactive multimedia, with former professor.
      Teacher becomes colleague.
      “George Legrady ... Professor, Media Arts & Technology graduate program, Department of Art, UCSB. Co-principal in the National Science Foundation IGERT Interactive Multimedia Research Program.”
    2. Quokka Sports, Inc., lead designer
      Daily digital storytelling with text and image, fast paced creative production
      ... becoming “designer.”
    3. Post Tool Design = David Karam
      Learning as work, the only way in an evolving medium.
      Languages: XML + XSLt; Flash 4 ActionScript; CSS++; JavaScript++
      “He uses programming to solve visual problems.”
      - Gigi Obrecht, co-principal
    4. etc.

  4. Teaching = Practice + Theory

    As work, with it's instrumental focus, grows bigger, teaching allows for continuing concentration on broader social context.

    1. Community Centers

      HTML + Cascading Style Sheets (CSS); Multimedia authoring in MM Director
      1. Artists’ Television Access
      2. Bay Area Video Coalition
      3. Media Alliance

    2. Undergraduate Studios

      1. Advanced Digital Studio 4 : CCA.design+media
      2. Flash 5 ActionScript for Artists : Stanford University Digital Art Center
      3. Math + Media (with Barney Haynes) [more] : CCA.new_media
      4. Flash™ Art: Critical Interactive Multimedia : SFSU.cia

    3. Graduate Courses

      1. The Digital (with Andy Cox) : CCA.seminar
        From the Everyday to Political Economy, Art World to Deep Theory.
      2. Digital Objects (with David Karam) : CCA.studio
        Conceptual approach to Object-Oriented Programming.
      3. Thesis Advising : CCA.research
        Topics ranging from Social Software to Uncanny Objects/Robotic Sculpture.
        “Thanks for the rigorous critique of my paper. Amazingly enough, out of five readers, you were the first to challenge any of my logic. Of course part of me hoped to get away with the stuff that you called me on, but it's a relief to finally get a thorough and knowledgeable reader. Thanks.”

  5. Research & Development

    Experiments in color, form, sound.
    Experiments in interface.
    Experiments in code structure.
    1. Vertext
      Dynamically draw and manipulate vector letter forms. Tool for exploring parameters displayed as properties.

      Object Oriented Programming (OOP), my first
      An “object” is like a Platonic form, a template or archetype from which the phenomenal, perceived thing is derived. Each letter is an “instance” of an object. (“objective” code; “subjective” simulation)

    2. Stochastic Sound Machine
      Analytic + Imaginative interfaces.
      Interface becomes performative and demonstrative.
      A visualization of sound object properties (aesthetic correspondence).
      Discovery process: randomness as a means to explore “infinite” possibilities.
       — see: Sound Object Demonstration
      Graphic design and motivation by v.j/d.j., designer, Jon Santos
      (who has used it in live performance).
    3. Sound Investigation Sequence
      1. Equal Temperaments [ image ]
        MAX/MSP/Jitter
        Sound generating exploration of harmony.
        Sonically demonstrates the mathematical principle of equal temperaments.
        Facilitates forming intuitions about the contours of a temperament.
      2. Intercalate
        “Intercalate: to insert between or among existing elements or layers.”
        Drawing as setting up a potential field.
        Converts gesture into a temporary “objective” reality.
        Semi-random drawing + semi-random sounds (tones within a “key”).
        Sounds generated with Equal Temperaments.
      3. Circle of Fifths
        Space for exploring sound sequences.
        Experimental interface for exploring simple melody and harmony.
        Tool for investigating tonal possibilities of the Western Chromatic Scale.
        Sounds generated with Equal Temperaments.
        An instrument I can play!
    4. Geometric Color Combo
      1. Polygon
        Technical: exploring dynamic symmetric drawing with vectors in Flash
        (drawing by numbers!). Algorithmic visual property control.
         — see: Color Object Demonstration
      2. Qix
        JAVA for cellphones
        3D series of triangles modulating in three dimensions, randomly moving, scaling, shading, and detecting collisions with boundaries and with the player.
        With Post Tool Design for Nokia.
        Collaboration with programmers, graphic designers, sound designers.
    5. OmniViewer Slideshow | xml
      eXtensible Markup Language (XML) = external document describes content
      Social need drives technical development.
      see: mom's photo viewer widget + xml
    6. MonkeyTypewriter (sic)
      Obsessive-Compulsive Object-Oriented Programming
      In the “flow,” i.e. “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched with one's abilities.” (Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, correlated with “contentment.”)

      “Looking At vs. Looking Through”
      — Richard Lanham, The Electronic Word

  6. Digital Work: Collaboration + Interpretation

    1. Anne Burdick
      • electronic book review
        Client-side: JavaScript = Create & Destroy HTML Elements
        Server-side: XSLtransforms XML into HTML page
        THE POWER OF JAVASCRIPT : What Text can do in a Browser, today.
        Everything element starts off as variables in the browser. The search pages, (and most parts of the other pages) are dynamically constructed, including html, css, and js event handlers. [process]
        Collaborators —
        Design: Anne Burdick, core faculty, graduate Media Design Program at ACCD
        DataBase: Ewan Branda, PhD candidate, UCLA Architecture + Urban Design
        Editor: Joe Tabbi, Professor, technology and literature, UIChicago
      • Austrian Academy Corpus?
        “AJAX” (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML)
        “SPA” (Single Page Application)
        Web application design for an electronic database of 19th- and 20th-century Austrian texts for the Austrian Academy of Sciences

        “Your p.s. question just brought up the BEST argument for dynamic generation.... ! The contents representation could be reconfigured on the fly, prioritizing DATE, MASS (number of pages, number of contributors...), etc.... Okay. Now I've got you hooked. ”
        — Anne, email to me

    2. Carnegie Hall Presents Benjamin Britten’s
      “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”

      Medium specific : linear narrative + interactive exploration
      Expands Benjamin Britten's didactic endeavor into www distributed multimedia (in a time of funding shortages for arts in schools).
      Multiple ways into each “object”/instrument.

      “You guys know there's nothing else remotely like this on the web, right?
      You do KNOW that!?!?”
      — Colin Morris, managing partner, Rolling Orange, Inc.,

      Massive team collaboration: education specialists, story writers, voice talent, student and professional musicians, character artists and animators, 3D artists ... multiple managers ... Department of Education, AT&T ...
      me ( last one to touch it! )

  7. Nukes Today

    Nuke History Outline | Annotated | xml
    Authoring as setting up a potential field.
    1. Multiple Views of Data
      XML + XSLt = Arbritrary Text Output (HTML)
      Single data structure in XML can be tranformed by various XSLt documents for variety of displays. Ultimately, tagging/semantics could allow reorganization via user interaction.
    2. Multiple Perspectives
       Texts and Images brought together through search engines; offerings for you to pursue under your desire, construct your arguments, stories. Images, especially, show the cultural circulation of terms, e.g., see “cosmic rays.”
    Content source: Detecting the Invisible: The SWOOPE Radiation and Radon Discovery Unit, Appendix I:The Language Developed to Describe Atomic and Nuclear Phenomena

  8. The Future

    Olivia + Tim + Me = Biological Modelling
    Multiple Views: more/other/better/different metaphors.
    • Olivia : Internet based Literature survey, re: “unfolded protein response.”
    • Tim : Modelling chemical dyanmics, beyond static “ball and stick.”