R11: Natalie Lawhead on Art Toys
- Due Feb 21, 2020 at 2:39pm
- Points 4
- Questions 4
- Available until Jul 13, 2020 at 8am
- Time Limit None
Instructions
Today's reading (it just came out this week) is about what Nathan Altice calls Links to an external site. "small idiosyncratic things that help other people make small idiosyncratic things." These systems (sometimes called art toys) soften the distinction between content creators and content consumers. Art toys invite the audience to engage in digital authoring as well. Adam's own programming practice has often focused on art toys -- his Ethereal Dialpad Links to an external site. Android app was a music toy that eventually gained over 10 million downloads and about $25,000 in sales of add-on apps from about one month of part time work.
Very few of these toys invite the user to design data structures and describe them in code involving curly braces and variable names (though PICO-8 is one exception). However, as the user interacts with any of them, data structures are being instantiated and assembled to represent stories, soundtracks, 3D models, or playable experiences.
Read what artist-programmer Nathalie Lawhead (creator of Electric Zine Maker Links to an external site.) has to say about the wonderful world of tools made by small teams, solo-devs, and shareware (weird, beautiful, and experimental things to be creative in + an analysis on building for approachability). Links to an external site.