2009 102

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

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Command Line Media Research

An exercise to build a simple tool to support visual comparison of front pages newssites a la Sarah Charlesworth's Modern History (1978)

Exercise explores the principle of:

  • simple command line tools focused on doing a simple task
  • the idea of a pipeline to join various commands together
  • introducing the concept of a variable to make a personal "tool"
  • cron jobs to automate a process over a long time period

start with example of how to rip the above page with wget. & re-assemble with montage...

(need simple solution for naming files with date, basic back quoting)

In general build up from really simple CL exercises of using imagemagick, file manipulations (moving, renaming, copying, deleting)... Introducing public_html...

Necessary Tools:

  • basics: cd, pwd, mv, cp
  • ssh
  • wget
  • imagemagick: convert, mogrify, montage
  • find
  • crontab

Concepts:

  • variable
  • backquoting

Adventures in Command Line


Chat bots

Eliza... tie in with Python callbacks...


Necessary Tools:

  • ssh program (look up for those on windows)


  • text adventures == early intersection of narrative and computational forms
  • multi-person / time sharing / interaction vs. batch
  • getting comfortable with the command line
  • command line == programming
  • pipeline VS. sealed case "suites"


pragmatic exercises / "puzzles" involving:

  • wget for some spidering
  • ffmpeg for some media manipulation?
  • imagemagick for some xxzzy ?!

Maybe cool to keep in the spirit of group / network activities / timing. How to communicate between users logged into the network. ... too complex for now

Exercises could take the form of puzzles with a description of a desired end result, like:

  • Produce a single image made up of images collected from the homepage of a particular website.

(wget => montage)

  • Produce an animated gif made up of the headlines from a particular news site

? CL feedreader ?? => image => movie ?

(?! find command / wildcards as a prelimary way to loop ) By creating a single (or more) variables, create a basic tool.

!! show how copying images / animation to public_html allows for instant web "publishing"