21 Nov

Posted at 19:14h in blog
1 Like

It’s always motivating to see where my pictures end up. How the spaces and the walls look with my works 🙂

If you have pieces of mine in your four walls please send me a snapshot. I’d love to see them

Cheers

Boris

17 Apr

Posted at 16:57h in blog
3 Likes

Art & Machines – “do androids dream of electric sheep?”

UK Since the first cave paintings humans have used tools to paint/describe the world around them and express themselves. 1 Starting our from anything like our extremities, sticks or cut/chewed grass for brushes to apply pigments on the intended surface to using resins, glue, knives/scissors/saws tu further remix the product many tools, objects and techniques have been put to use to this ever growing list of art-tools.

Computers and algorithms have also been added to this list. Especially since the advent of the personal computer or nowadays with the quasi-omnipresence of mobile phones.

The mechanisms of computer art is now starting another new chapter of machine assisted design in the form of: 

  • Generative art is art that is created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. In some cases the human creator directs the algorithm to represent their own artistic idea, programmed inputs and variables, in other cases the system takes on the role of the fully independent creator. 2. For further references & resources feel free to check out: 
  • https://p5js.org/
  • https://thecodingtrain.com/beginners/p5js/
  • Machine Learning Art: as in various other endeavours, machine learning can also be applied to arts to create, predict, decide in lieu of the artist. By using the data input and applying various ML techniques an output that adapts to the surrounding and ever changing input.Thus working with machine learning offers a further tool for testing the limits of human and machine interaction and creativity.3. For further references & resources head to the following links: 
  • https://aiartists.org/ai-generated-art-tools
  • https://ml4a.net/

For further reading I strongly recommend having a look at the following blogpost in which two of my favourite actors in this space Espen Kluge and Jason Bailey discuss the process of coding assisted art synergy between human and machines in the creative process.

https://www.artnome.com/news/2019/7/24/generative-portraiture-of-espen-kluge

  1. Musée d’Archéologie nationale, domaine national de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (2021): https://archeologie.culture.fr/chauvet/fr
  2. Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art
  3. FlashArt Magazine Website https://flash—art.com/2020/03/artificial-abstraction-and-the-poetics-of-machine-learning-the-role-of-ai-in-the-art-of-anna-ridler-and-roman-lipski/

15 Apr

Posted at 20:41h in blog
2 Likes

A beginners guide to Blockchains and NFTs

UK If you don’t where to start across the ever-growing amount of “blocks” and “chains”. You might want to consider these few points before getting started:

Crypto currencies have enjoyed a lot of attention in the past years. The concept behind decentralizing finance follwos other overarching megatrends towards decentralizing commodities and services such as electricity or mobility as well as the creation creating new organization from the bottom up. At the time of writing this post, the whole sector is arguably in a hype bubble (again). As a result the markets for crypto currencies and by extension for NFTs have been extremely volatile  and will probably remain so in the future. Furthermore, the surge in popularity has lead to the creation of many further alternative crypto currencies, “altcoins”. Wheras some blockchains aim to solve specific issues or apply functionalities to the blockchain technology many of these new blockchains and coins add little additional functions and value and can currently only be considered as speculative as much of the value remains still driven by hype and attention economy cycles. In order to evaluate the crypte landscape it is prudent to keep in mind the following points:

  • crypto remains highly speculative: bitcoin and other altcoins have seen rises and falls by several orders of magnitude since inception
  • the decentralization concept has potential: the number of real world applications is growing
  • Some cryptochains go beyond constituting a decentralized trading asset have some real world applications built in, and thus may have a greater chance of succeeding/prevailing in the long run
    • Smart contracts allow for transaction and NFT contracts between parties (e.g. ETHER)
    • Supply Chain (e.g. VeTHOR)
    • Long-Fi Data Transmission Network (e.g. HELIUM)

Non fungible tokens NFTs have equally boomed in recent years and.  Nevertheless the premise of NFTs are specific transaction functions built into the blockchain (not all are able to process these): a smart contract. Depending of the nature the these blockchain contracts can consume substantial amounts of energy energy to create an renforce on th blockchain, depending on the underlying consensus mechanism. As of 2021 it is estimated that the amount of energy consumed by blockchains is even equivalent to the energy consumption of a whole country. Due variety of differnent blockchains is is important highlighting that the NFT authorship is stored on a specific blockchain and thus the NFT signature/ownership is tied to specific chain used. The proof of ownership lives and dies with the respective blockchain used

To get started with NFTs – you can follow theses steps:

1. Chose a blockchain which allows for NFTs storage (ETHER, TEZOS, HIVE) 

2. sign – up on one of these marketplaces: coinbase, uphold to buy the respective currency

3. install a wallet as an browser extension for storing and paying for the chosen coin and NFT (e.g. Metamask for ETHER)

4. sign-up and sign-in on NFT marketplace website to trade and bid NFTs (e.g. OpenSea)

If you have made it this far congrats for following through 🙂 as a smal rewards you can go check this link @hicetnunc platform and pick up your first #NFT for (nearly) free by yours truly. If you have further comments or questions, just drop me a message. Cheers Boris

PS: if the giveaway has already ended don’t despair 🙂 there are more from time to time, just follow my twitter or my newsletter.

10 Apr

Posted at 14:11h in blog
3 Likes

What are NFTs? 

UK Disclaimer: all opinions are my own and neither constitute legal no financial advice in any way – please refer to my disclaimer page for more details

NFTs Stands for „non fungible Tokens“ which at its their core are pieces of code/identifiers on a„blockchain“ to assign the authorship/ownership of an asset/digital address such as an jpeg/picture or by extension even a physical asset. In practice this means that the asset original creator as well as all subsequent owners are registered on a public albeit secure (through cryptography tech) common ledger i.e. the blockchain.

Blockchain,  a trend topic of recent years – is a common ledger i.e. shared list/”book” which keeps track of each of the assets registered on the list: similar to real estate register.

the lists the present and past tokens or coins ownership as well as each transfer which is happening on the ledger. the reason this approach is also refered to as “defi” decentralized finance, is that the content of the blockchain/ ledger is spread out across the user base, which makes the ledger very difficult to manipulate as backups/consensus are kept across the whole user network. The listed address/blocks acts as a container of the tokens or coins which are units/traded across the chain the Most famous (there are now hundreds of blockchain with Coins and smart contracts such as BITCOIN,  ETHER, TEZOS  POLKADOT 

Crypto currencies each have their own ledger, protocol and platform which makes each and everyone completely independent from each other. In turn, in order to possess and multiple coins you usually need separate wallets/adresses on for each category of coins. Cryptocurrencies are usually governed by a specific set of rules programmed in their creation,- such as limited supply rules of governance and distribition and transfer across its network. The basis for the redistribution or rewards, can be different from blockchainn to blockchain : these mechanisms are called “consensus mechanisms”. the main types are:

  • Proof of work: ” the blockchain ledger extenders/keepers so called “miners” are trying to solve very difficult mathematical puzzles in order to be the first to complete a block and be rewarded with cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. This difficult puzzle is known as Proof-of-Work. One of the by-products of this system is it requires a lot of electricity and machines working on a problem in order to solve it. “For this reason why bitcoins ether chains are very energy intensive and not eco friendlz
  • Proof of stake: “is trying to achieve the same outcome as Proof of Work: to help verify transactions on the blockchain. However, the difference in Proof of Stake is the miner of a new block is chosen by the network – instead of the miner being the first to solve the puzzle”

source: https://decrypt.co/resources/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake

Crypto Wallets are small Apps which help the user access/manage (e.g. send, receive, destroy a.k.a. “burn”) their tokens coins associated with their adresse. And while the address and its content records remain open to the public – however the wallets owner (can) remain anonymous. In the blockchain jargon users differentiate beween “hot”/”cold” wallets which refers to the wallet state/security online: whether it is active only when installed/connected physically to the net via a “USB key” for example or whether the wallet is “hot” : always online /active on the blockchain.

Smart Contracts are additional functionalities “coded contracts” which are implemented on some specific blockchain protocols. Smart Contracts are constituted of IF and THEN statements. This allows for interesting new features such as transferring transaction under specific circumstances (e.g. swap conditions). Some real world applications can already be seen in the world of NFT trading – where a the smart contracts allows for royalties automatically being transferred to the original content creator whenever the NFT is reused or resold to a new owner,

03 Mar

Posted at 21:03h in blog
1 Like

Analyse de Texte – Dans les artères souterraines

FR En temps de crise sanitaire avec un grand “C” les rythme plus calme des journées permettent de parfois de retourner dans le passé. Les repetitions, les rituels me font souvent repenser aux bancs d’école. Conditions ideales donc pour ressortir les outils d’analyse de texte pour l’analyse de poème 🙂 d’un ami. Le poème est le seizième du recueil “La reddition d’une etoile”

Dans les artères souterraines

Dans les artères souterraines

Des mégalopoles infatués aux néons

Voués aux nuits sans sommeil et songes sans réveil

Il titube en face der moi dans metro lance 

Aux confins des lueurs bleues 

Arrachées à la pénombre 

Le regard transparent 

Soupirail vers le précipice 

De sa vie éparpillée

aux poussières du néant

Il erre sur sa trajectoire 

Diagonale fendue 

La place du hasard

Saigne sous ses paupières

Et moi je pianote sur mon iPhone 

perdu dans mon eldorado de pixel

Et je suis connecté à l’univers

Et j’ignore cet inconnu en guenille

Au coeur utile 

Par le ressac des années

Aux souvenirs mourants

Le tribunal des vivant

L’a depuis longtemps condamné

Il n’est plus qu’un fantôme 

Égaré sous les quolibets

Les arenes de pitié

Et moi je sur mon téléphone dans mon paradis numérique 

Il n’y a pas d e place dans mon réseau

Pour un coeur qui abdique

Le métro nous emmène

Vers l’eden souterrain 

Vers une nuit sans sommeil

Un songe sans réveil

 Poème – P.E. Hun – La reddition d’une étoile – autopublié (2021)

Le poème décrit une scene dans un metro décrit une figure en pleine vue que le protagoniste ignore occupée par son portable – une approche qui peut

s’étendre a la société en general.

Le Metre:

08 Feb

Posted at 20:34h in blog
2 Likes

UK Although I am mostly self taught – with a few stints at diverse evening courses and Summer schools – I can strongly relate to the topics detailed in this insightful book. In a practícal A6 Pocketbook Format, the authors R.Davis & A. Tilley give first Hand advice on how to start out one´s own artistic journey to writing First Applications to surviving and thriving as a working artist.

It is a Book Full of small actionnable advice on different aspects, to wich I enjoy returning to from time to time

Verdict: 4/5

10 Oct

Posted at 14:18h in blog, ENG
1 Like
Street Advertisment for the KiS Event @Harras Metro Station, Munich

DE Anbei eine Beschreibung meiner ersten Kunstaustellung in München

UK On the weekend 9-11th October, I partook in the “Kunst in Sendling” Event with an Art exhibition of my own. The KiS Event is hosted annually by the Kunst In Sendling e.V. Artist Group.

My show was hosted in the “Literaturkeller” of Stemmerhof, a great and atmospheric Event location centered around a historic farmhouse, from 18oos in the middle of Munich – 10 minutes walking from Theresienwiese.

As my first solo show, the exhibition was a great experience – resulting in many new contacts with art fans and professionals in the art scence. Below I put some first impressions.

This first show centers around digital art and the frontier of the physical, real depiction in photographs and the realm of the emotional and imaginary. Check out the impressions below. Let me know what you think. Am always happy for feedback

cheers

Boris

20 Jun

Posted at 17:17h in blog, ENG, UX, web design
5 Likes

UK As any web developer will tell you, in order to improve your website visibility/ranking and performance, next to obviously providing relevant and good content it is key to improve the user experience (UX) on the web presence. There is a huge amount of approaches and resources online, so I started compiling a list for personal usage, which strategies worked our best for me. The following might help you get started as well. Broadly, I now follow the process below:

  • testing out ideas: tweaking for better results and ranking, for details check out the section below
    • PART 1: content & structure
    • PART 2: performance & functionalities
    • PART 3: legitimacy & trust
  • collecting data/feedback:  measuring traffic to and on your website
  • improving iteratively towards your goal (back to step i)
    • Some improvements are are difficult to pull off, or have unintended or even comical consequences for example the WP plugin ‘Imagify’ completely backfired by changing all my picture catalogue by changing the image resolution to the wrong dimension for their intend use 
    • Hunting for mistakes / errors in your web code, strategy or design and correcting them (e.g. broken links: these can be tracked found with tools such as the dead link checker)
    • You will have to experiment by trial and error to get to where you want to go your self

PART1: Improving your website content and relevancy

You can start thinking about and working on the following aspects:

  • Choosing the rights semantics / domain name:
    • Short domain name that is easy to remember
    • Domain name containing or related words to the website content
  • Creating relevant & compelling content: this recommendation was brought to you by captain obvious ?
  • Presenting the content in a fashion that can be understood by your audience as well as by search engine/web crawler:
    • Always using adapted HTML, JavaScript identifiers
      • Having a page header HTML format
      • A clear and readable menu and page structure
        • By using a simple menu listing the main content into groups/by key words
    • Building and submitting a sitemap to the different search engines

To collect feedback on the  your website traffic & behaviour  between the menus and pages you can use the behaviour flow tool from Google analytics:

 

PART2: Improving the website performance

To improve the overall experience of a website as well as to improve the search engine ranking, a key ingredient is the loading speed. In nowadays mobile phone era this has become even more important. For enhancing the website performance and functionalities, it’s useful to look at these items and Tipps such to improve website speed:

  • Clean & compressed code
    • Using a clean theme and code on your website as well a regularly updating these packages to prevent bugs
    • If you use WordPress you can try out the following add-ons which perform these tasks for you: G-Zip Enabling
  • Smart loading & Caching of Data
    • If you use wordpress you can try out the following plug-ins which perform these tasks for you: WP-fastest-cache
  • Fast Webhosting
    • It’s best to shop around for the most convincing deal you can find. A serice I have personally had good experiences with is the hosting offer by GreenGeeks, a eco /renewable energy hoster (affiliate link)
  • Secure Webhosting: especially if the website includes a shop or personal data
    • Providing a mobile friendly interface by using a responsive web framework
    • Reduced file sizes: especially images throughout your web presence:
      • Image scaling: to screen/shown size as of publication anything beyond  2000px in width or height is probably overkill
      • Image compressing: by using Photoshop Tools (Paid) or RIOT Image optmizer (Free) for example.
      • Image formatting: by using new formats such as .WEPB which are ca 25% smaller than comparable .JPEG, .PNG images at comparable quality.

To measure your website speed and change results you can use the following tools

Check out some sample screen-shot below of some of my intermediary results. As you can see, I still have work to do ^^

PART 3: Gaining on-line legitimacy, trust and authority

Akin to the scientific community, a publication gains in legitimacy through the number and the quality of references, quotes i.e. “links” it gets. Humans and by extension search engines will judge the importance of a website in the same manner.

To collect and to measure the number of backlinks referring back to your website domain, you can see the number and quality on backlink checkers such ahrefs.com

From my experience this is an area where there are no tricks or quick & easy solutions that will help in a sustainable fashion (for example by using dubious content networks to post your domain across all etc.) since search Engines are constantly being further developed to identify these strategies.  

So, in order to promote the website, you can look at the different tactics to place your “signature/domains” links – which all essentially boil down to various techniques of networking:

  • Obtain exposure/guest posts/interviews in relevant magazines and media outlets
  • Sign-up on various reference social networks and contribute/fill in your profile referencing back to your domain*
  • Getting listed in/on local directory as well as on the various map applications

Last but not least remember to have fun along the way, the internet is a layer cake of different technologies and the outcome of you experiments can sometimes be unpredictable ?

For further useful tools and link head over to my resources page.  I am happy to hear your feedback if this compilation helped you! Cheers, Boris

ADDENDUM BACKLINK SEO LIST: for photographers and visual artists some good places to start setting up profiles & backlinks to your site are:

26 Apr

Posted at 15:31h in blog, ENG
2 Likes

Book Review: following up on a summer course I attended on Mixed Media some time ago at Central Saint Martins College – UAL London, I recently picked up a copy of the book: CSM Foundations – Key Lessons in Art and Design to freshen up the lessons and to get further insights in modern art education.

Central St. Martins College – University of Arts London

The foundation course is a famous entry-level course to build up one’s own portfolio. It provides a 360 introduction to the art world, and is structured into different sections that give introduction and insights in the different elements of artistic creation. The curriculum is builds upon international ideas and curriculum such as the preparatory art courses at the BAUHAUS school of art in Weimar, Germany.

CSM UAL – Foundation Book

The book reflects the course and is structured into different chapters starting with ideation/research and then moves on to exercises in: drawing, reflection, crafting. The next part of the book then details further the artistic exploration and critical, topical positioning process, necessary for an artist to explore and diagnose one’s creative potential.  

Thus, the book gives good jumping off points for exploring new ideas and deep diving into specific areas of interest. This makes it a nice book to browse certain chapters and concentrate on exercises and parts that are relevant to yourself.

Very useful sections include practical thoughts experiments and short exercises to jog the mind and asking yourself:  on the differences between art & design, meaning & metaphor, or to challenge oneself in generating 30 ideas in 30 minutes, writing a proposal, contextualizing image and narrative, and many more.

My verdict: a practitioner’s book to start out in the at world and explore your own position & voice within it.

Available: In English under the following link