MMXXI: art in the age of COVID

Making art in the pandemic age requires new perspectives on context, value, and presentation. I had to deal with these challenges just like every other artist this year. I was already producing work that occupied a hybrid online and physical space. But, the new context relied much heavier on virtual space. I handled that for […]

Fine-tuning a GPT-2 language model and generating text with a Flask web app

I recently published a book of computer generated photographs and wanted to also generate the introductory text for it. I looked around for an online text generator that lived up to the AI hype, but they were mostly academic or limited demos. I also wanted a tool that would yield language specific to art and culture. It didn’t exist, so I built it.

MMXVIII: the year in review

It’s been a prolific year for Lucidbeaming: multimedia art by Joshua Curry. Beginning with a new art studio and finishing up with a host of Winter projects. The main theme has been expansion. I took my music and found ways to incorporate performance and sculptural elements. The video work has been scaled up to building […]

Running Fluidsynth on a Raspberry PI Zero W

For this particular project, I ended up using a Raspberry Pi Zero W for its size and versatility. Besides running Fluidsynth, it also serves up a Node.js webapp over wifi for changing instruments. It’s controllable by any basic USB MIDI keyboard and runs on a mid-sized USB battery pack for around 6 hours. Pretty good for such a tiny footprint and it costs around $12.

Embers: a breath powered interactive installation celebrating collaboration

It started with incendiary memories: looking at a fading bonfire with friends at the end of a good day, stoking the fire in a pot belly stove, and watching Haitian women cooking chicken over a bed of coals. I wanted to build something with modern technology that evoked these visceral feelings and associations. This is the story of that project.

PLUDD: Noise sample pack released as free download

This is a free sample pack of noise and glitch audio files sourced from malfunctioning guitar pedal software. The files are sonically rich, normalized stereo, 96khz and 44.1khz, and somewhat optimized for looping.