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Software Art for iPhone?: “

At a recent This happened, Simon Oliver (Hand Circus) demonstrated to us the process of creating his iPhone game Rolando. I will write about this more once have the video of the presentation online, but what is very clear is that as a gaming & entertainment platform it is really going to take off. Indie developers can now create applications themselves and sell via the app store direct to a large customer base. Unlike the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP that are closed development & no (official) publishing to ‘bedroom coders’.

I’ve discussed with many people the possibilities of the iPhone as a platform for delivering software art & interactive toys, created by artists & designers. This starts to ask many questions. Who would the target audience be? Would people pay for software art? Why do they buy it?

Something I’ve mentioned in the past about Toshio Iwai’s work for Nintendo DS… ‘Electroplankton is really like an archive of his previous artworks. The tiny creatures reminiscent of Music Insects. Two plankton Lumiloop & Luminaria being portable game versions of his installation Composition on the Table from 1999″.

This took Toshios work to the mass market. Most people bought it without knowing who the artist was, many people also bought it as they were fans of the artist and wanted the work in their pocket.

Also recently I bookmarked SRC, a japanese ‘creative label for screen media’. An interesting approach, like a record label..’Here we will produce, develop, and sell various interactive art / software / video-based projects’. Dropclock, by the talented Yugo Nakamura et al, is released as a free trial but $15 to buy.

So will the iPhone work as a platform for artists? Are you an artist or designer working on something? Leave your comments below.

Here are two people currently adapting their works to iPhone…

Golan Levin

Golan Levin created Yellowtail in 1998-2000. ‘an interactive software system for the gestural creation and performance of real-time abstract animation’. A former student of Golans, Lee Byron (in the photos above), is working on converting this artwork for the iPhone, this time with multi-touch input. Golan will be released via the app store soon for a small fee. Here is a work in progress video.

For the programming readers, Lee has put up a bit of interesting info about the development on his blog. Hopefully this will lead to a Processing or openFrameworks style coding environment for creating iPhone applications, thus easier entry points for developers.

Andreas Muller

Andreas Muller is also working on a port of his popular For All Seasons application. Photos here.

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(Via Pixelsumo.)