The Geek Art Movement 89
An anonymous reader writes "Is your work space drab? Do you want art to reflect your geekiness? Then you might like an art movement that has been gaining popularity over the past few decades. This is movement is 'Geek Art' where artists take inspiration from all things tech and geek. The art works range from 'Hello, world!' in 23 programming languages to collages of Old Atari games to more contemporary pieces like modern apps as Famicon software. It's sites like Redbubble and Society 6 which have enabled the independent artist to get their work out there while sites such as 20x200 take a more curated approach. 8bit retro is the new Mona Lisa!"
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Heroic NESbots battle the evil Famicons. More than meets the eye!
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It's where overweight geeks flock together dressed as NES controllers.
Not Altair (Score:2)
Those would be Atari games, not Altair.
What? No mention of RTTY art? (Score:2)
ASCII art [wikipedia.org] is cool enough, but RTTY art [rtty.com] is where it's at!
-Anon.
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When ASCII art isn't enough, there's always the Rasterbator [arje.net]. Feel free to click on it. It's completely SFW.
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No thanks.
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Before slashdot invented the "lameness filter", some fool did Goatse in ASCII art. I had to give them credit for effort, even though they were a grade-A idiot. I wish I could mod them as such:
+5 creativity
-9999999 asshat
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Just curious. What does:
mashing F5 on Slashdot
mean? In Linux running fluxbox, <ALT>-F[12] takes me to my other desktop. Is this a (gag me with a spoon) MS Win* thing?
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I took Art Studies and studied Jackson Pollock paint splatters, pictures of naked Barbie dolls in various locations and positions, and arrangements of elephant turds on an image of the Virgin Mary and was told they were all "Art" and thus not criticizable (only critique-able). So much for thousands of years of cultural heritage.
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Geeks should definitely stay out of art.
Wow. That's so brilliantly stupid, it's practically art. Awesome!
Sort of like an elephant finger painting with his trunk. Were you dropped on the floor when you were born?
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I took Art Studies and studied Jackson Pollock paint splatters, pictures of naked Barbie dolls in various locations and positions, and arrangements of elephant turds on an image of the Virgin Mary and was told they were all "Art" and thus not criticizable (only critique-able). So much for thousands of years of cultural heritage.
Art is push; not pull. If you don't get it, that's on your end; not ours. We don't much care if you get it. Expression is all it's about. If you enjoy it, yay, but that's not required. Make of that what you will. HAND. :-)
I think Pollock was a fool, but I still like some of his stuff. It's ... interesting. There've been lots of others who've done far worse stuff.
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You know what's really geeky? Studying art as an academic and enjoying thousands of years of cultural heritage.
Uh huh. What's art, smart guy? Got ya there, didn't I?
I spent most of my high school years in the mud room throwing pottery on a wheel. I was pretty good. Lots of friends and family still proudly display my pieces. Is it art? No, they're defined as "crafts." Shows what we know of art. However, I'd put some of my Raku up against the Mona Lisa, and defy you to tell me one's more beautiful than the other.
Later on, I decorated my homes with framed seismic sections (I was working as a geophysical tech).
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I can think of many examples of who are.
Yes. Look into the history of Michaelangelo's early tribulations wrt the Sistine Chapel. He was inventing it as he went along. Some of the early stuff he tried failed horribly (media! Ptheh!). He was geeky enough to pull it off brilliantly though.
Leonardo worked on Mona Lisa throughout his lifetime. That's serious attention to detail. That's a pretty long phase of maintenance of something you care about.
Galileo! His art (yes, I think science is art) was so important to him that he had to defy a Pop
as a geek (Score:1)
it offends me what can constitute art these days
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... every bit as much as it offends me that people like you exist. HAND.
Who? (Score:1)
Reflect my geek? Who is my geek?
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Literalness, check!
Geek art since the 80's (Score:5, Interesting)
Geek art is special to us, I'm in my 40's and amongst some of the "geek" artist pieces I do - is with 80's electronics components, I puzzle them together as "working art", meaning...it's like a digital sculpture that can be hung up on the wall, and it can DO stuff
Some of my friends make pixel art with beads & pearls, Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man etc. Very cool stuff. It's a special generation that will be remembered for this art. I can pretty much guarantee you that original artwork from those days will be worth a fortune in the future, pretty much like certain collectible games and retro computers are now.
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The Magnet Man bead art was upgraded to the year-round honor of hanging on the fridge with the help of some neodymium magnets.
Re:Geek art since the 80's (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why the whole "games as art" debate has always confused me. Pixel art is art. FM synthesized music is art. The two together form an aesthetic that never existed before the 80s, and didn't make it past the 2000s. Even what we're seeing today is a revival, none of the retro art I've seen could have existed in 1990. IMO, that makes these games not just art, but quite significant historically.
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Pixel art is art. FM synthesized music is art. The two together form an aesthetic that never existed before the 80s, and didn't make it past the 2000s. Even what we're seeing today is a revival, none of the retro art I've seen could have existed in 1990.
I had a thought very similar to this a few weeks back while driving with a friend (both in our late 40s). A Steve Miller Band song came on the radio (either Fly Like An Eagle or Jet Airliner, can't remember which) with the classic sweeping synthesizer sounds, and it struck me...when exactly did that old synth sound go from being the "sound of the future" to being "retro"? Made me feel very old...
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Certainly - if it's the right original artwork. The other 99.9999999% won't be worth a bucket of warm spit.
And collectibles? They move in waves. Beanie Babies were hot once. So were Magic cards. But anyone who invested in them thinking they'd be rich in the future... they're pretty much screwed now. You can make a
R mistake (Score:2)
cat("hello world!\n")
I think I've proven something that I didn't want to know.
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I think they just did a straight copy&paste for all of the languages from here [wikipedia.org].
Personally, I don't like that it has C# and HTML. The middle-top one looks like ABAP? I don't know, never used it. Anyone know what language this is?
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Of course it is a mistake. Maybe it is supposed to represent the general spirit of R.
Probably the help page of hello world documents this bug.
But your link seems to have the correct version ;)
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A google search revealed that the middle top one is VHDL or GHDL ("VHDL is an acronym for Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language")
Look here: http://ghdl.free.fr/ghdl/The-hello-word-program.html [ghdl.free.fr]
I'm a sucker (Score:1)
Geeky art doesn't have to be so specialized (Score:2)
I prefer my art in a form that's fascinating not only to the niche audience but to others as well. For me, this means interesting desktop ornaments from Shapeways. The options trumpeted in the summary feel way to...not to be so cliche but...hipster? Seems more of a focus on being unique than being appealing.
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Agreed. I mount my computer components on a single acrylic sheet and hang them on the wall. Some have mistaken them for art, but it's just functional to me, up off the floor, easy to manage... I've thought of adding some sort of picture-like frames, but meh, whatever.
Them: Oh that's a cool piece, very cyber punk, it's all what is it?
Me: I guess it sort of is a form of geek art. That's my computer.
Them: Obviously, but like which one? An old 386 or 486 or something?
Me: No, and stop touching the fan
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Art? (Score:1)
This is just hipster crap - science because its cool or whatever (see maddox's recent discussion).
Also, for the love of god, http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/using-namespace-std.html [parashift.com]
(in this case, I guess its OK, but can we stop putting that globally?)
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And of course, a true geek doesn't buy such a poster. A true geek produces it himself.
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Awesome, but not technically pointillism
Re: Princess Peach Pointillism (Score:2)
Current geek artwork (Score:2)
A print of the southern Milky Way, from the Pointers (Alpha and Beta Centauri) to the Eta Carinae nebula. Including the Southern Cross and the Coal Sack.
A Georgia O'Keeffe print of a Jimson Weed flower that looks like a dogwood but isn't.
...laura
Princess Peach Pointillism (Score:3)
Hard drives (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget the hard drive platter mobiles.
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Do you mean hanging pieces of hard drive suspended by wire, or a vehicle made out completely out of, or in the shape of, hard drive platters?
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The former is standard geek art, but the latter sounds pretty cool too. Talk about low rolling resistance wheels.
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Or music composed by tweaking & controlling the drive motors.
Electronics Art (Score:1)
Here's a guy that makes electronics art that I stumbled onto years ago. He takes parts from old TVs, VCRs, and other obsolete electronics and solders little people/aliens and the occasional animal out of them. He custom-made me a penguin (due to my fondness of Linux), which I'm fairly proud to own. Pretty cool stuff, IMO...
http://www.etsy.com/shop/obviousfront
Geekdom isn't limited to IT. (Score:1)
If coding was my primary job duty, sure, I could see this kind of art being pretty relevant. But even though I have an IT background, and some coding-related books sitting around, working at a large, modern telescope [subarutelescope.org] in a major observatory complex [hawaii.edu], my geekdom is more about space science, so the art on the walls (and my laptop's wallpaper) tends to be more along the lines of either stuff out in space, or stuff that looks at stuff out in space. For example, my current wallpaper [hawaii.edu].
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For example, my current wallpaper ...
Cool! Damn, some of you people have sweet toys to play with. Here I'm struggling to get people to allow me to turn off automatic night lights so I can see some stars at night, and they're wondering WTF I'd want to do that?!? $deity! Grumble, mumble, ... peons! Meanwhile, you get to hang out on a mountaintop above most of the atmosphere and the clouds ...
Enjoy the ride! You'll miss it horribly when it ends.
Doesn't Orion look beautiful at this time of year? :-)
My own photography and my mud phone (Score:1)
I have about 150 prints on my walls (and a large framed print as well), all photos I have taken over the years. Camping, Mexico, Arizona, Korea, Ecuador/Galapagos, the places I have been and have fond memories of.
I also have a couple photos of my wife and kids as well...
I also have a " mud phone" which a friend of mine made about 12 years ago. He used earth from my yard and fashioned a cell phone out of it (complete with buttons, a screen, microphone, and speaker, with the words "Nokia Mud Phone" on the b
Art from old electronics (Score:2)
Count me in... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd count myself among those geeks. Not long ago, I bought an interesting etched silicon wafer off ebay (not too expensive, really), and then framed it and hung it on the wall. I think it's beautiful in its own right, and the geekiness just makes it that much better.
Framed Silicon [flickr.com]
(On a side note, finding sufficiently large square pictures frames turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined.)
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I considered that, but I was afraid a custom frame would've been prohibitively expensive, especially considering the wafer itself cost only something like $20.
Luckily, I managed to find a good match (as can be seen) after checking a number of arts & crafts shops.
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Art to reflect your utter lack of life? (Score:2)
I'm wearing a t-shirt from Woot and have an old Bloom County cartoon of Opus doing battle with a Ronco ad spouting TV set stuck on my mini-fridge.
Does that count?
Geek Art? Mondriaan! (Score:2)
It figures.
Yes, let's make cartridge labels! (Score:2)
Yes, let's go make some Famicom cartridge labels, and pretend that that's all that's involved in making software! Want a product to become a reality? Just create some box art, and magically, the product is sparked into reality! Why waste money on programmers when you can just hire a few artists and create new software that way?
Never mind that a few real programs were actually created this way (Syncronys SoftRAM.)
Thunderbirds (Score:2)
opening file (Score:2)
Not much real geek art myself besides the clock made from a platter of our old computer system. Do have a few old disks hung up like someone else. I framed my dead MMO disks, lol. I used my vintage music collection more as a focus than my computers as my door trim is old album covers and the framed pictures are a mosaic(Judas Priest logo, and picture of a 45rpm record) of all my album covers (no pilfering pics either, i shot my actual album covers myself)
Coffee table is a 1980 Wang minicomputer tho :)
Saving
A.K.A. Date Repellant (Score:1)
These are the equivalent of Dogs Playing Poker as far as creating a one-time-only dating experience.
"Lizard Lost in the Desert" (Score:1)
Gecko Romin' Art
Dogs playing poker (Score:2)
Individuality is great, and you should have things that are meaningful close at hand and on display, but just recognize that to most people geek art has about as much class as dogs playing poker [google.com]. If you have non-geeky visitors and want to be taken seriously, maybe find something you like that is more mainstream for the living room. Same for your cube at work. Something geeky on your monitor and on your desk, something more mainstream on the walls.
Piet? (Score:4, Interesting)
How come the Piet programming language [dangermouse.net] didn't make the cut? :(
Hello world fail? (Score:1)
Handcrafted Geek Art (Score:1)