Hacker (hobbyist): Difference between revisions
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*[http://art.ntu.ac.uk/performance_research/birringer/daplit3.htm Live Art Research] Gesture and Response in Field-Based Performance by [[Sha Xin Wei]] & Satinder Gill, 2005. |
*[http://art.ntu.ac.uk/performance_research/birringer/daplit3.htm Live Art Research] Gesture and Response in Field-Based Performance by [[Sha Xin Wei]] & Satinder Gill, 2005. |
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*[http://www.coolwebpagetools.com/blog/posts/2005/07 Cool Web Page Tools] "Color Sequencer" by Paul Slocum, July 2005. |
*[http://www.coolwebpagetools.com/blog/posts/2005/07 Cool Web Page Tools] "Color Sequencer" by Paul Slocum, July 2005. |
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*[http://www.technonerdz.org/2014/10/hackers-everything-there-is-to-know-about/] "The Hackers Identity, October 2015. |
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[[Category:Hacking (hobbyist)| ]] |
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Revision as of 08:03, 25 February 2015
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2009) |
In home computing, a hacker is someone who modifies software or hardware of their own private computer system. It includes building, rebuilding, modifying, and creating software (software cracking, demoscene), electronic hardware (hardware hacking, overclocking, modding), either to make it better, faster, to give it added features or to make it do something it was not originally intended to do. Hacking in this sense originated around hobbyist circles discussing the MITS Altair at the homebrew computer club.
Hardware modifier
Hardware hackers are those who modify hardware (not limited to computers) to expand capabilities; this group blurs into the culture of hobbyist inventors and professional electronics engineering. A sample of such modification includes the addition of TCP/IP Internet capabilities to a number of vending machines and coffee makers during the late 1980s and early 1990s.[1][2]
Hackers who have the ability to write circuit-level code, device drivers, firmware, low-level networking, (and even more impressively, using these techniques to make devices do things outside of their spec sheets), are typically in very high regard among hacker communities. This is primarily due to the difficulty and enormous complexity of this type of work, and the electrical engineering knowledge required to do so.
Hardware hacking can consist of either making new hardware, or simply modifying existing hardware (known as "modding"). Some hardware hackers perform novel and perhaps dangerous modifications, to make the hardware suit their needs or to simply test its limits.
Hacker artists
Hacker artists create art by hacking on technology as an artistic medium. This has extended the definition of the term and what it means to be a hacker. Such artists may work with graphics, computer hardware, sculpture, music and other audio, animation, video, software, simulations, mathematics, reactive sensory systems, text, poetry, literature, or any combination thereof.
Dartmouth College musician Larry Polansky states: "Technology and art are inextricably related. Many musicians, video artists, graphic artists, and even poets who work with technology—whether designing it or using it—consider themselves to be part of the 'hacker community.' Computer artists, like non-art hackers, often find themselves on society’s fringes, developing strange, innovative uses of existing technology. There is an empathetic relationship between those, for example, who design experimental music software and hackers who write communications freeware." [3]
Another description is offered by Jenny Marketou: "Hacker artists operate as culture hackers who manipulate existing techno-semiotic structures towards a different end, to get inside cultural systems on the net and make them do things they were never intended to do." [4]
A successful software and hardware hacker artist is Mark Lottor (mkl), who has created the 3-D light art projects entitled the Cubatron, and the Big Round Cubatron. This art is made using custom computer technology, with specially designed circuit boards and programming for microprocessor chips to manipulate the LED lights.
Don Hopkins is a software hacker artist well known for his artistic cellular automata. This art, created by a cellular automata computer program, generates objects which randomly bump into each other and in turn create more objects and designs, similar to a lava lamp, except that the parts change color and form through interaction. Says Hopkins, "Cellular automata are simple rules that are applied to a grid of cells, or the pixel values of an image. The same rule is applied to every cell, to determine its next state, based on the previous state of that cell and its neighboring cells. There are many interesting cellular automata rules, and they all look very different, with amazing animated dynamic effects. 'Life' is a widely known cellular automata rule, but many other lesser known rules are much more interesting."
Some hacker artists create art by writing computer code, and others, by developing hardware. Some create with existing software tools such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.
The creative process of hacker artists can be more abstract than artists using non-technological media. For example, mathematicians have produced visually stunning graphic presentations of fractals, which hackers have further enhanced, often producing detailed and intricate graphics and animations from simple mathematical formulas.
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Bubbles was created using watercolors, then scanned into a computer. Colors were then manipulated using a software imaging tool
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Sunrise was created using pen and ink, then scanned into a computer and colored with a software imaging tool
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Rolling Golden Hills of California was created using pencil, scanned, and then painted with a software imaging tool
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Barnsley's fern, a fractal fern computed using an iterated function system
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A fractal that models the surface of a mountain
See also
- Firmware upgrading
- Operating system swapping
- Electronics
- Make (magazine)
- Blue box
- Overclocking
- Art.Net
- Burning Man Festival
- Computer art
- Computer music
- Digital art
- Demoscene
- Electronic art
- Electronic art music
- Electronica
- Experiments in Art and Technology
- Generative art
- Internet art
- Robotic art
- Software art
References
- ^ http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt
- ^ http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2325.txt
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ "Cornelia Sollfrank". Thing.net. 2000-07-25. Retrieved 2011-07-01.
External links
Hacker Artists
- Don Hopkins - web site - studio
- Steve Mann - web site
- Pamela Z - web site
- Karl Sims - web site
- Richard Stallman (rms) - web site
- Brad Templeton - web site
- Leonard H. Tower Jr. - studio
- Strata Chalup
- Lile Elam - studio
- Ed Falk
- Stig Hackvan (deceased 2013-11-09)
- Samia Halaby
- Chris Hull (nozefngr)
- Craig Latta
- Mark Lottor (mkl)
- Paul Slocum
- Ed Stastny
- Star (Heather Stern)
- [2] Lemonadeface
Hacker Art Projects
- Cellular Automata by Don Hopkins
- Genetic Art at Steike.Com
- More Genetic Art at Steike.Com
- Evolved Virtual Creatures
- Aural Gratification Ring
- Cubatron Cube 3D Light Sculpture
- Big Round Cubatron Round 3D Light Sculpture
- SITO's Synergy / Gridcosm
- SITO's Synergy / Hygrid
- SITO's Synergy / Panic
Hacker Art Web sites
- Hacker Art
- Hacker Artists Studios on Art.Net
- Gallery of Computation
- Music.Yahoo.Com: The Hacker Artist
- Rhizome.Org Connecting Art & Technology
- SITO - web site
Hacker Art Mentions
- Ars Electronica Festival Archive "Vector in Open Space" by Gerfried Stocker 1996.
- Switch|Journal Jun 14 1998.
- Eye Weekly "Tag -- who's it?" by Ingrid Hein, July 16, 1998.
- Linux Today "Playing the Open Source Game" by Shawn Hargreaves, Jul 5, 1999.
- Canterbury Christ Church University Library Resources by Subject - Art & Design, 2001.
- SuperCollider Workshop / Seminar Joel Ryan describes collaboration with hacker artists of Silicon Valley. 21 March 2002
- Anthony Barker's Weblog on Linux, Technology and the Economy "Why Geeks Love Linux", Sept 2003.
- Live Art Research Gesture and Response in Field-Based Performance by Sha Xin Wei & Satinder Gill, 2005.
- Cool Web Page Tools "Color Sequencer" by Paul Slocum, July 2005.
- [3] "The Hackers Identity, October 2015.