#rC3 - Operation Mindfuck Vol. 4

rC3 Wikipaka Music

Herald: Dear galactic beings, get ready
for the nerdiest niche topics, the most

interesting ideas and the most absurd
discoveries from computers, art and the

world - Operation Mindfuck! Directly from
rC3 world to your home and into your minds

and hearts. Please welcome your hosts:
bleeptrack and blinry!

bleeptrack: Hi everyone at rC3. This is
bleeptrack and blinry and we are already

back to our yearly little talk about
computers, art and other curious stuff.

And yeah, we already reached volume 4 this
year. So this is the fourth episode of

this talk. And if you want to watch the
older talks, you can find them on blinry's

website. They're all called Operation
Mindfuck and yeah, have fun with them. I

think the older ones are, some of them are
in German and now we do them in English so

more people can have fun. And the talks
work as follows: We have prepared

different, very small topics and we will
explain them in alternating order. And

today, blinry will start with an
interesting variation of keyboards.

blinry: That's right. It's not the kind of
keyboard you might be thinking about right

now, but it's about musical instruments.
So this is about isomorphic keyboard

layouts, because in the beginning of this
year, I was like starting to learn how to

play the piano. And I was researching a
bit of how that system works, basically.

And I was a bit... started getting a bit
frustrated with it for the following

reason: I can't give you a whole intro
about music theory right now, but what you

need to know is that these little keys on
the piano keyboard are specific notes and

the distance between them is always one
semitone, one semitone between them. And

they are arranged in this linear fashion,
basically. And then, if you want to play

some part, what you do is that you count
the right number of steps between these

notes. So for example, to play a major
chord, what you do is always you start at

the base note and then you count one, two,
three, four for the second note of this

chord and then one, two, three for the
third. And you press those three together

and then you have a major chord, which
sounds like this pleasant, positive chord.

But then, there is this weird property of
this keyboard where... it's designed in a

way so that if you play all the white keys
on the keyboard, you get the scale in C

major. You can just play the whole scale
from C to the next C and the black keys

are the ones you would skip in the scale.
And because of that, if you start your

major chord at a different note, like F#
for example, you do the same counting -

you would count one, two, three, four, for
the second note and then one, two, three

for the third. But now the shape is a bit
different, you'll start playing on black

keys and sometimes you have to mix them.
If you'll start playing a D-major chord,

you'll have one black and two white ones,
for example, which is the strange

properties of this keyboard, I thought,
because often when you play the song, you

play it in a specific transposition, you
start playing with a specific tone. And

moving all of the notes up and down by a
specific amount. And then you have to kind

of try to re-learn how to play all these
chords and the melody, because they will

have this different shape. Your fingers
have to do different things. And I thought

this was really weird. And I researched a
bit about that. And the first thing I

found, I think, was this instrument, which
is called the "Dodeka", which is just the

name the company has given this thing,
where actually all the semitones are

arranged next to each other without a
specific shape. I think, still the black

keys here are like the C, the middle C or
something here to give you an impression

of where you are in the scale, but then
you have 12 semitones until the next C

just the way in a linear fashion, meaning
that if you know the shape of the major

chord, for example, like you count four
and you count three, you can move this

shape anywhere on the keyboard to, like,
move it up and down, which, I think, is

pretty cool. Back then, I asked a specific
person who knows how to play keyboards

really well in the greater community: What
might be the reason for this strange

layout? And they gave me two reasons. One
was that if you have this shape with the

black keys sticking out, you can, kind of,
feel where you are on the keyboard when

you play it, which makes sense, I guess.
And the other reason is that, like the

classical music notation also uses that
system where notes, which are directly on

the lines or in the gaps of this classical
music notation, are the white keys on the

piano keyboard. And if you put a b or a #
in front of it, you would use the black

keys. So that kind of fits together. And
to change the layout, you would change the

past few hundred years of music notation,
which I think might be worth it, but yeah.

There are some even more advanced ways to
arrange the notes and they use hexagonal

keys, which, I think, is really cool. So
this is the harmonic table layout where...

like you arrange the notes, according to
this diagram here: If you are at a

specific tone like a C here and you want
to go to the C#, you move one key to the

right over these columns here and like
if you go diagonally up to the right, you do

a major third, which is four semitones.
And if you go directly to the left, it's

three semitones. So basically to play a
major chord, for example, you would push

the bass key like the C and then in
addition, you go four semitones up to the

E, right. And then this one above it is
always seven semitones up. So to play a

major chord you would kind of... you can
play this with one finger and you press

your finger in the middle of this three
and then you have a major chord. And to do

a minor chord, which is like a sad sounding
sound, you can press your finger at this

corner here. This would be a C minor
chord. And this is a really cool property.

The harmonic table layout has some
properties which make it pretty weird. For

example, to go an octave up, you have to
do a really big jump. You have to jump

from this C up to all the way over here,
which is kind of inconvenient. So people

also came up with another arrangement of
the Wicki-Hayden Layout. I think, this was

invented in the 19th century already,
where you, if you start at a specific key,

you go a whole step to the right. This is
like two semitones. And then, if you go

diagonally up to the right, you have seven
semitones... perfect fifth. And to go an octave

up, you go two rows up. And this is a
pretty nice layout. And, I can just show

you how this works, actually, because
people made like a web-based demo on this.

So you get this hexagon grid. If we start
at a D for example and want to play a

major chord now, what we do is, we go four
semitones up. So we end up at the E. And

then we add one seven up from the original
base note, so it's a G. And you can

actually play this on your keyboard, like
I pressed the E and G - we have a major

chord and again, you can move this shape
around anywhere. So if I start here and

this sounds... it's a major chord here.
Here. Here. The minor chord is just

another symmetric version of this form
starting at C. We add this one and this.

This is minor. This is major. And you can
start transposing specific keys up and

down, like this is the first inversion of
the chord. And yeah, this is... for me,

this was really surprising to see that you
can build a structure like this, and then,

if you remember the shape of melody, you
can just transpose it anywhere, which is

cool. People are actually building
hardware for this. So this is something

people call a Jammer Keyboard. And if
you're interested in this, you will find a

small community on this who build their
own input devices like this. And also,

while preparing this talk, I learned that
accordion, the specific accordion also

uses structures to places where you put
your hands and one of them is used for

playing chords. And the other one, some of
them use like a piano key layout, but some

others, like this one, also have an
asymmetric layout where - I think it's

another variation of this, where, if you
move diagonally up, it's one whole step.

And to go up means to go two whole steps,
basically, and that defines this layout.

But then it's, again, really easy to play
a melody and move it someplace else and

play another key. Yeah, you know. What
have you prepared next?

bleeptrack: All right, so I like a lot to
work with generative art and tiles and

tiling is a super simple way to make
really fancy pattern. And two years ago, I

looked a bit deeper into truchet tiles,
and that's still really fascinating to me.

So I thought, might be a nice topic today
to show you a bit around truchet tiles.

So, this was basically the first version.
So the idea of truchet tiles is, that you

have rectangular tiles that are not
symmetric along their X and Y axis. So for

example... or this other... like the first
proposed truchet tiles are these four

tiles on the top that are basically made
off... that are rotated by 90 degrees. So

you get all variations that you can make
out of them. Now you can use these tiles

to make larger patterns. So you put them
in a large grid and you have different

possibilities to do so. For example, the
left version and... ah, the most

important: For example, like the left
version here - you can just throw in

always the same tile and you get a very
nice repeating pattern, but maybe it's a

bit boring and you wouldn't really need
tiling for that. But it's also possible.

But you can also say, like you go on
alternating road and switch them every

second place, so you get a bit of a mosaic
shape. And you can also play around more

of that and place them in very certain
ways and directions to create bigger

patterns. And that's usually what I find
really interesting. And of course, you can

just place them randomly like the example
below here, which also makes a really

intriguing pattern to me, maybe a bit...
like, it's not so quiet, sometimes a bit

exhausting to look at, but it's fun to see
pattern emerge that are not planned. So

this is the earliest version of the
truchet tiles. And I think this version

here... ah, right. This is basically every
bit of the tiles that I just showed you.

Maybe you know that one, this is called 10
print. And this is basically a super

famous way of pattern generation, where
you just put diagonal lines instead of

triangles. And in this case, you'd have
basically only two tiles. Right. You have

this line that is flipped to the right and
you have the line that is flipped to the

left side. And you can place it randomly
in it. This 10 print pattern became so

famous because you can just write more or
less a one liner in nearly any coding

language and this will come up in the
area. And yeah, in a time of Basic, when

you can just write a one-liner in Basic
and have your whole screen field a random,

nice pattern. So this is also derivative
truchet tiles, actually, but these are the

ones that I think most people know when
they think of truchet tiles. It's a

version where you don't work with
Rectangles or lines, but you have parts

of, like quadrants of circles placed in
the edges. And in this case, you can't

make four tiles. You can only make two
because if you rotate them by ninety

degrees, third flip, so you can only get
two. And when you place them in a random

order, that's the example you can see
below, you get a super fancy pattern that

basically contains off - either you can
accidentally basically form a whole circle

or like parts of circles, that get
entangled and form super long lines. And

it looks really fun. And this is also the
first picture that I saw of truchet tiles.

And I found that very intriguing. And,
well, it turns out, you can do even more

cool stuff with that. For example, I need
to find my mouse. Here we go. You can,

basically, you can start scaling the
pattern in different ways. And, for

example, you can use it for ditherings. So
here, the background image is the image of

Mona Lisa, as you might have recognized,
and you can take the image, darkness and

then scale your pattern accordingly to
that point on your image. So you get sort

of a dithering and it looks super fancy.
And what I also found recently, what I

think is exceptionally good looking, is a
very special way of scaling truchet tiles

by Christopher Carlson. And he published a
paper at Bridges, which is a super nice

math and art conference - I'm not sure if
it's a whole conference or more like a

workshop, but they have super nice papers.
So if you're interested in these

intertwined maths & arts stuff look into
these papers, they are supercool. And

Christopher Carlson came up with a nice
way... a nice esthetic of having these

scalable truchet tiles. And you can see
these are three scale sizes. So this is

basically the original size and then you
go one step smaller and you can see that

he - in his case, he works with white and
black areas and you can now combine them

in ways. For example, this is a super,
super quick and easy example. So here on

the left side, you have that large tile
and you add on the right side two of the

smaller tiles. And you can see that the
posit let's, for the big one, let's say

the dark one is the positive space, that
your white space or your negative space

here becomes the positive space in the
next smaller scale. So this also always

iterating when you go one scale-step
smaller. And now you can think about how

can I combine these different scale...
these different scales? And he had - he

prepared some examples of, for example,
the left one. It's more or less like a

Quadri. So you can just choose a rectangle
and divide it by four and you get it one

scale smaller. You can do this
recursively, randomly, basically. Or you

can also do it in the form of a pattern or
maybe in a certain shape. So, when you

want to approximate certain outlines, you
can go smaller there to reach a certain

shape. And when you fill that in with
these tiles, you get this result. And that

looks super fancy, especially the left one
for my taste is super awesome and looks

really, really nice. And even in this
paper he even goes one step further and

thinks about different additional motives
that he could do with these different

scales. So I'm not sure if this would be
considered truchet tiles, because they

lose this not symmetrical attribute in
some occasions like the TS version here

that would be symmetrical along this axis.
So I'm not sure if this would actually be

considered truchet tiles, but it looks
nice, so who cares? So he made different

versions that can also be applied or added
to that set of tiles. So you just have,

basically you have these four entry or
exit points like on the top, bottom left

and right. And you need to have at least a
circle there or connect your entry or exit

points in different ways. And he just
tries out different shapes. And if you add

this to the regular scaling truchet tiles,
you get these results and that looks super

fancy because you have very, very nice
fitting shapes that are still super

randomly distributed. And, ya. So this is
where I think, I should stop maybe talk

about tiles, but if you want - you fall
into a rabbit hole. We have rabbit holes

prepared at the end also, but if you want
to go further into tiling, especially

maybe check out penrose tiling, this is
such a huge and fancy and complex topic. But I

think that it would fill several of its
own talks. But if you want to dig further,

I can also highly recommend penrose
tiling. That's it. So I will give back to

blinry.
blinry: Yeah, penrose tiles might be a

topic for some Operation Mindfuck in the
future, right. Now, the section is

settled. What even is art? I'm often
really fascinated by artworks and art-

installations, which kind of push the
boundary of what's still considered to be

an artwork. And I wanted to show you some
of those. For example, last year, there

was an Italian, Mauritio Cattelan, who
just bought a fresh banana at a grocery

store and taped it to the wall of a museum
and then declared this as art, the title

is "Comedian". And because Cattelan was
rather well-known and popular, this was

also worth a surprising amount of money. I
think this was.... like 120000 $ was what

an American couple paid for this artwork
to buy it. And after the sale took place,

the following thing happened: Another man
walked up to this artwork and explained to

the people watching and recording this,
that this was an art-intervention called

"hungry artist" and just, yeah, said it
was very tasty and that he didn't want to

be disrespectful to the original artist,
but this was an intervention. And yeah,

this artwork came with a kind of
certificate that said that you had really

bought it and that it's yours now. And it
specifically mentioned that you can

replace the banana as needed. So after
this happened, it was just like people

bought a new one and taped it to the wall
again and it was repaired. But yeah, I

like this combination of these two
artworks, interleaving with each other. I

think, this artist was like... he was
asked to leave the museum, but nobody

pursued legal action. The next artwork I'm
going to show you, has to do with this

material, which you might have heard
about, it's called Vanta-Black, and it's

one of the darkest materials known to
humankind. It's a specific... on a

microscopic level, it has nanotubes which
are in parallel, kind of sticking up from

the surface where this paint is on. And
then if lightweight falls on the surface,

it kind of gets trapped between these
little tubes and can't escape anymore,

which is why it looks so pitch black. I
think like there are a numbers where

people state, that this swallows 99.4% of
visible light or something. And this was

developed a few years ago by a company for
a pretty diverse applications, but there

was an artist who was really interested in
this: Anish Kapoor, a British Indian

artist, who had... who was interested in
playing with black color anyway. And they

came to an agreement where they said that
Kapoor was the only artist allowed to use

Vanta-Black in artworks. So one example is
this one, "descent into limbo", which

Kapoor had already made installations of
like many years back, but in a recent

revival of this artwork, he actually painted
the inside of this, with Vanta the hole that

is several meters deep. And because he was
using this special paint, you can't really

see the shape of it. And at one point,
there was a visitor to this artwork who

tried to look into this hole and didn't
believe that this was actually a hole,

tried to step into it and fell in and had
to be rescued after that. So, yeah, the

situation where only Kapoor is allowed to
use this color made several people really

angry. For example, there is another
artist called Stuart Semple who's making

his own pigments, colored pigments and he
designed the "world's pinkest pink" one

time. And this is the store website where
you can buy this pigment, which states

that it's available to everyone except
Anish Kapoor. Right, a kind of revenge

action. And if you click on the "Buy It
Now" button, you actually have to, like,

verify that you are not Anish Kapoor and
you have no plans to share it with him.

Well, some time later, Anish Kapoor posted
this picture on a social media channel. So

apparently someone had broken this
contract and sent Kapoor some of this

pigment. Well, I think Stuart Semple was
really angry and disappointed about this

and asked him to give it back, but also
didn't have really any means to take legal

action against this. You might have heard
of Banksy, who is an English street artist

who chooses to remain anonymous, and he's
well known for making graffiti on just

walls on the street somewhere. But at this
point, he also is so famous and well known

that he is starting to sell his artworks.
For example, this is a painting with a

girl with a heart shaped balloon. And this
went up for auction in an auction house

some years ago. And because Banksy is such
a mystery and so popular, this is also

worth a surprising amount of money. I
think, over one million US dollars was

paid for this at this auction and after
the hammer fell and this was sold, the

following happened: I can show you the
video or the thumbnail gave it anyway. So

it's just been sold and then a loud
beeping noise was heard and this artwork

just was sucked into the frame of itself,
which shredded the artwork. Actually,

Banksy had prepared this stunt in several
years in advance and built like this

shredding-device into the frame. Probably
he or someone he knowed was present at

this auction and pressed the remote
control button to activate the system.

Yeah. So this is an example of self-
destructive art, which maybe not so

surprisingly even made it worth even more.
I think at this point it's valued at

around three million U.S. dollars. So,
yeah. Also, it was supposed to shred

itself completely, but apparently some of
the mechanism failed and so it's now half

shredded. And yeah, I think I had that on
the slide here, it's now called "Love is

in the Bin" after the stunt. This is an
artwork, the last one I want to show in

the section by the German artist Josef
Beuys, who is often working with unusual

material. And yeah, this is an artwork
consisting of several kilograms of butter.

It's called "Fettecke" which translates to
Fat Corner, literally. And he just took

the butter, put it in the corner of the
museum and let it stay there for many

years, which I'm pretty sure developed an
interesting smell. Mm hmm. And after Beuys

died, the custodian of the gallery where
this was exhibited accidentally cleaned it

up. You might have heard of that before.
He didn't know what it was about and just

removed it and put it in the trash can.
And one of the students, of course, was

really angry about this, went to the trash
can to recover it, treasured the remains

really deeply and I think also received a
payment from the custodian because of this

destruction. And now I also learned that
not very long ago, a couple of artists got

these remains of the butter and distilled
liquor from it. I have a picture of it

here like this. Yeah. Even another
artistic intervention on top of this. So

this is a really strong liquor. And they
tasted that and said that it tasted really

strongly of cheese. Yeah, that's all the
strange artworks I wanted to show you in

this section. bleeptrack
bleeptrack: Oh, amazing, amazing. I think

that's where the German "Ist das Kunst
oder kann das weg?" comes from. Like "is

it art or can I remove that?". Perfect.
Yeah, let's stay with art. So I really a

lot enjoy watching machines work and
especially pen plotters, and they are

perfect to produce art. And I never, in an
Operation Mindfuck talk, I never showed

you different types of pen plotters and
realized that's actually really

interesting, because there are quite
different constructions. So let's do a

small walk through the history of pen
plotters. And this is to my knowledge, one

of the oldest pen plotters. It's a
ZUSE Graphomat. And this one - I took

the photo in the technical museum in
Berlin, it's in an exhibition now, I think

it's in a permanent exhibition now. Sadly,
it's not running, but I think they can run

it. At least there is that piece of paper
that is in the machine. Looked to me like

they plotted it on plays. It could be. I'm
not really sure, but it would be extremely

awesome. And these are... what you can't
really see on these photos is that these

are like huge devices. If you stand before
that, it's like over a meter long, over a

meter deep, I guess. And it's like, I
think it's also maybe, a bit, maybe l...

it's about a one meter square, like it's
super huge and it just can grab a pen and

draw it. There is nothing else that it can
do. But of course, it's also quite an old

machine. And there is a person called
Georg Nieß, who worked at Siemens in the

60s and 70s, and he was one of the
pioneers of generative art and plotter

art. And he bought one of these
ZUSE Graphomat machines for Siemens at that

time. And it was extremely modern and
futuristic thing to have, like a machine

that can plot, of course you have to
mention that they never know printers.

Everything was, also in architecture was,
of course, still drawn by hand. So these

machines that can draw extremely precise
lines, this is totally fancy. What you can

also see these pens and ink on the bottom.
These are all graphed pens. You can still

buy them and they are still extremely
expensive, but they are really nice for

pen plotting because they work a bit
different than most other pens. They have

a metal nip, a very flat metal nip and along
the nip the ink will get sucked out or

runs down and the nip is completely flat,
because the pen is meant to be used like

on the point and dragged along on the
point. Because most modern pens like

roller pens will not really like that if
you use them directly in 90 degrees on the

paper. So these are... the Graphomats are
the, basically the first drawing machines.

A few years later you will find machines
that were more usable for companies and

they have the size of a regular printer or
maybe a bit bigger for A3 plotters. And this

one is from HP. And you can see that our
hackspace had quite a lot of fun with it

and tried to get it to work again. And
this model, for example, works in a way

that the paper is moving forwards and
backwards. And the pen, that's the blue

thing you can see here. This is... ah,
right. There are two. Like you can store

one and you can put one pen in this device
and the pen can only, like, move left to

right. And the paper will be dragged along
with two little wheels, basically, these

are here and here. And then you can plot.
These are one kind of the devices that you

can find a lot still on on your local
craigslist. And these are the other ones.

This one is a Rolan Pen Plotter and it
completely moves along two axes. So the

paper stays in place. And these Rolan
plotters, they have some really nice

features. For example, you can see that
the plotter is standing up a bit and the bed

is an electrostatic bed. So you can put
your paper on, press a button and the

paper gets sucked to that bed. It is super
fancy and also on the left side here.

Oops, I lost my screen sharing for a
reason. I still see it. Oh, I'm sorry.

It's back. Like on the left side here.
These are like basically parking stations

for pens. So the pen plotter
(incomprehensible) or exchange different

pens on itself. That is super fancy, and
if you want to get one of these older pen

plotters, make sure that they are not too
hard to communicate with and make sure

that they can do the thing that you want
them that they can do. Because, for

example, this older HP plotter, that was
really hard to talk to, because it did

only speak very... sort of proprietary
language and only the newer HP plotters

started to speak HPGL. And the Rolan
plotter also can do this, for example. And

Rolan also has its own language. So
just make sure you know what the device

wants to speak to with you, because this
can make your life a lot easier. Yeah, and

these older plotters, they also often have
a nice function that they have a direct

text mode. So you can... you need to boot
them in a certain way, like flip some

switches on the back side and they will
boot into a text mode. So you can just

send text over serial and it will just
write that down. It has its own matrix of

letters and its own fonts store net. And
that's super fun and makes a great

tutorwall plotter, for example.
And then, there are also a lot of, yeah,

DIY home-brew sort of plotters, and this
one is maybe the one that's the easiest to

build. You can find them either under the
name Michaelangelo or Polargraph. I think

these are the two most common names for
these. And they work super differently. So

on the left and on the right side, on the
top here and over here, you have two

motors on - also, you need some sort
of control device or a little computer.

And around these motors, you will find a
string that is attached in the middle to a

gondola that can hold a pen and that
gondola usually also has a servo motor

that can push away that gondola from your
drawing area. So you can lift and put down

your pen. And to make this more stable,
usually you put down some weight on the

left and right side so that the string has
some force on it and works better. Yeah,

these are super easy to build and they are
really nice communities around them. And

the very positive thing about this
construction is that they scale extremely

well, because like the way the old Rolan
plotters, for example, worked, you have

these two Axes that can move and you are
very defined on how long these Axes are.

But with this, you can basically scale it
indefinitely. And I've seen some

installations where, like, plotted over a
whole five meters wall with this, because

you just need to have a very long string
and that's basically all. That's super

fun, so if you want to build one yourself,
this is a very nice way to go. But there

are also new commercial versions that are
quite fun. This one is called Linus. It's

super tiny and basically only consists of,
I guess, two servo motors and a little

Arduino or something. And it can only draw
on a super tiny area. And it's also so

wiggly, it can't - no matter what - it
can't draw a straight line. But it's super

cute to watch and super easy to take with
you and has some nice APIs and it's quite

hackable. So that's also a really neat
device. And well, this is basically, I

think, the most professional one that you
can buy up to date, which is called

AxiDraw. But I've also seen some self-
built versions of this. And you also have

your two axes, there's a little controller
part over here and the funny thing here is

that you can put in very different types
of pens here. For example, this is a

fountain pen, but you can basically put
any pen in that you want. That's different

to the old plotters. They had very
specific, very little, specific plotter-pens

and they are really expensive now if
you want to buy them and if you actually

draw, you can basically use whatever you
want. And you can also put your pen in a

certain angel that's especially nice for
fountain pens or sort of brushes. And I've

seen a lot of people not only using pens,
but also going to use acrylic paint or

very different materials or also, this is
one example, where someone just basically

put in a sort of a toothpick and drew onto
some sort of flat clay and made pattern in that

and that's super fun. So you're not
limited to going... you're not limited to

use pens, but yeah, be creative and use
all kinds of stuff. So if you ever come

around some sort of pen plotter, try it,
it's super fun for a very quick and nice

creative coding output.
blinry: I really love how plotters combine

this kind of handmade esthetic, which
impositions and stuff with this digital input.

bleeptrack: Yeah, totally.

blinry: And I think people sometimes joke,
that it's easier to get these plotters to

run and to, like, produce something
compared to actual printing devices we

would use.
bleeptrack: All right.

blinry: Apparently like printing out a
piece of paper because of driver issues

and stuff. And these are very clear
defined things, yes. I wanted to show you

some RFCs. That abbreviation is short
for "request for comments". And it's

really... it's a really common way to
define protocols for the Internet of how

the Internet works. For example, TCP and
IP would be defined in our RFCs and HTTP

and how Mails work and stuff. And yeah,
there are several thousands of those. And

sometimes people publish RFCs on April
Fools' Day. And these are sometimes really

interesting to read. One really well known for
example, is "RFC 1149: IP over Avian

Carriers", which suggests to use like
carrier pigeons to carry information from

one place to another. So it specifies that
you would like put your information on a

piece of paper and roll it around the leg
of a pigeon and then send it off that way.

And it will fly to the target, maybe. And
then you can retrieve the information

there. And this RFC states some very good
technical properties, systems like this

have, for example, that the carriers have
an intrinsic collision avoidance system

which increases availability. Right. Or
that multiple types of service can be

provided with a prioritized pecking order.
So this could be used to prioritize

certain types of information over another.
It says that "with time the carriers are

self-regenerating", which is a nice
property to have for a network and an

additional property is "built-in worm
detection and eradication". And some time

ago, a user group, a Linux user group in
Norway, I think, actually implemented this

system. And they got the pigeons and they
set up all of the required infrastructure

and then tried doing a ping command from
one node to the other. And this is the

result. You will see that they try to send
nine data packets here. And I mean, the

runtimes of these ping commands are...
it's like most often over an hour or

something for the pigeon to go to place B
and return. So, yeah. And only four of

these packets arrived back. So they stated
here that they have 55 percent packet

loss. But it works. Now. Another RFC is
6592, the "null packet". This specifies

"null packet", which "are neither sent nor
acknowledged when not received". There is

like an informal definition where they say
that "The Null Packet is a zero-dimensional packet"

and that it "exists since it
is non-self-contradictorily definable".

And then in this specification
follows the formal definition that it's

intentionally 0 of the reference,
not "NULL", and in the end of

this document, there is like a list of
references and related work and there is

like the key "NULL", which points to an
empty string. So this is all you need to

know about the NULL packet. It goes on and
lists some properties of this packet, for

example, that it is inherently good: "The
Null Packet cannot have the Evil Bit set,

by definition. Consequently, it is rather
clear and undeniable that the null packet

is harmless, having no evil intent." Now,
what is the evil bit? - you might ask.

RFC 3514, let's look at that one. The
authors of this RFC noticed that the

definition of an IP fragment - it is about
IPv4 - has a single bit, which is not used

for anything, it is just undefined. It
doesn't have... it doesn't carry any

meaning. And the authors thought we should
change that and play some meaning to this bit.

So here is the layout of this field.
It's the first bit in the sequence and

they give it like this shorthand E, E for
evil bit. It can have two possible values:

If it's set to zero, the packet has no
"evil intent, host, network elements

should assume that the packet is harmless
and should not take any defensive

measures." And another possible value is
one. "If this bit is set to one, the

packet has evil intent and secure systems
should try to defend themselves", while

"insecure systems may choose to crash, to
be penetrated, etc." And then there's our

seagull's and great detail about how
exactly and in which situations this bit

should be set. For example, if you are
doing pentesting on a system, trying to

attack it, you should set this bit so that
the receiving system will recognize that

this packet has evil intent and can take
defensive measures. And you must do this

if you are attacking, yes. And here's just
a list of some more fun RFCs. If you're

interested in the stuff, you should check
them out. Fun is the "Hypertext Coffee Pot

Control Protocol", HTCPCP, which like
gives some specific HTTP requests, for

example, to make sure, that a coffeepot
which is connected to the Internet, that

you can request to know its status,
whether it's empty or full and how full it

is and stuff. And this is also where the
HTTP Code 418 comes from, which says: I am

a teapot. Now, if you try to send a packet
like that to a system, which is actually a

teapot, it can reply with this and this is
an error, sure. There is an RFC for "TCP

Options to Denote Packet Mood". So this
allows you to set a specific mood in a TCP

packet if under some circumstances... I
don't know, you're building a software and

the software notices that there is a lot
of delay in your communication and stuff,

it could send an annoyed mood in the
packets, that it is sending, to let the

other system, that it is communicating
with, know. And then the system could

respond to that accordingly. And there is
an RFC called "Scenic Routing for IPv6",

which suggests, that traffic should be
sent over specific, very nice pathways,

along with nice landscape and in a lot of
fresh air. For example, it says to

prioritize communication channels that are
wireless, for example, to give the data a

very scenic pathway to its destination.
That's the RFCs I wanted to show you. You

will find a Wikipedia article with a list
of April Fools' RFCs. If you are

interested, there are several dozen of
those and take those out. Yeah.

bleeptrack: I especially love the packet
mood, when you think about upcoming AI.

That might be interesting. So it can
communicate how it feels. I don't know.

Maybe that's good. Maybe it's not good,
who knows. All right. To dig a bit into

game development and indie game
development and while doing some research,

I stumbled upon some people who called it
their own fancy, I guess, interesting

applications. And so there are three short
videos I wanted to show you around a bit

and all three of them... I think they are
very interesting because they try to

implement game rules that could not exist
in our world and are very different and

it's quite mind bending if you walk around
there and interact with stuff. So this is

the first one, as it's called Non-
Euclidian game, which is, I think, is not

really correct, because, I think, it would
be still Euclidian, just insisting on

Euclidian room. But as you can see, you
can make photos of the scene and then put

that photo in the scene and suddenly
everything appears there. And that's...

like it's super mind bending and super fun
to play around with that. So far, I've

just found that video and not a really
playable version. But maybe there is one

now and here also, for example, like
gravity gets applied to stuff that is

placed in the scene and it's just yeah...
It's just super fun and crazy. Crazy to

watch. Here it would like... like this
scenario, I think that will be... would be

a really nice parlor game. All right.
That's the first example. Second one is

this one. And this is actually really a
Non-Euclidian room, basically. You can

imagine that it works a bit like, for
example, Herveini's back or the Tardis, if

something looks small from the outside and
very big from the inside. So you made some

tunnels that have this effect. So this one
looks super from the outside. But actually

when you walk through it, it's quite short
of this one. This is the opposite one. It

looks super, super small from the outside
and extremely large from the inside. And

here's... I think the YouTube channel is
called Copen, and he has a lot of

different versions of that. So this is
also... this is also a nice example. So

you have rooms and you can walk in a
circle and the longer you walk, you start

to realize it's just three rooms. There's
just a blue one and a red one and a green

one. But the shape of the, let's say,
house lets you think there should be at

least four rooms, but it's just three. So
you can do these crazy effects. And yeah.

I don't... I'm not sure, I don't want to
spoil you too bad - uh uh I made something

fullscreen that I did not want to have
fullscreen, give me a second. Here we go.

I just... I think it's codeparade, yes,
sorry. So check out the videos because he

does a lot of fun examples if you continue
here. He also has a version, where you...

he still has these tunnels, but some let
shrink everything when you go through it,

so everything... and you cover up at the
end everything's smaller or everything

gets bigger. That's also super fun. And I
can see, I can see him making super fancy

tunnel games with that. We're already at
the last one, which is a world in

hyperbolic space. And it's also... yes,
it's really fascinating for me to look at,

because when you walk around here,
everything is bended so weirdly, because

when you think you could look at the sky,
it's just wraps around you. The world

wraps around you. So you see, I don't know
the other end of the world on top of you.

And this is just.. it's just so crazy to
walk around there. They always have a bit

of problems with motion sickness. And I
think this would not make it better for

me. But it's so fun. And also, I think in
a few seconds, he will also check out the

house more to walk into or to in front of
that house. It's just, it's just crazy.

And it's hard to imagine why it should
look like... now he's moving backwards and

then he reaches a point where he's
basically from the world side on the

opposite side of the house. So the house
starts walking around him. That's super

funky, and I think game engines and games
are perfect, are a perfect medium to

experience such mathematically fun ideas
that you can have and I think some

Operation Mindfuck talks back, blinry also
explained a 4D puzzle game.

blinry: In the very first one, yeah.
bleeptrack: Yeah, exactly. And I think that goes

like in the same direction as these games
and these test engines. All right.

blinry: I heard that it takes a long time to
build these types of games because there

are basically no pre-made tools for you
and you have to do everything yourself.

bleeptrack: Yes, right.
blinry: Model a four dimensional object or

hyperbolic one... you have to code
your tools for that, basically. Yeah.

bleeptrack: Yeah, yeah.
blinry: It's really fun to look at. I also have

some geometric things I wanted to show
you, related to topology. That's a field

of mathematics where you are looking like
more at the geometric structure of the

object, not its concrete, precise...
dimensions, for example. There is this

joke, that for a topologist there's
basically no difference between a coffee

pot and a donut. Because, if you... like
all substance, which you can squeeze and

pull, you can kind of transform the cup
into a donut without making any cuts or

without doing anything together. Now,
that's often the rules in topological

transformations, that you cannot create
additional holes. And because this shape

only has a single hole going through it in
the middle of the donut or in the handle

of the cup, these are basically the same
object, topologically speaking. Right. And

yeah, then you can do interesting
observations with this. A really well

known example is the Mobius strip, where
you take a long piece of paper and you

glue the ends together. But before you do
that, you rotate the strip like one end of

the strip once and then you paste it
together. And then this is an object that

has an interesting property. It only has
one side. Now, if you were to take a pen

and start drawing on the top of the
surface here and follow it along the

strip, you would get behind the ring here
and draw and then get on front here again.

And then as you wrap around, you are now
at the back side of the strip and you like

kind of opposite to where you started, but
you're still not done. Now you're still

drawing. You can go behind here and there
and under this and on the top side, on the

backside of this. And then you are going
to where you started, you made a long line

and you would do the... all of the surface
in one stroke, basically, because there

was only one of them. There is really fun
stuff that happens if you try to cut into

this strip. I have a video and can try to
find a good point where you can see it. So

this person is taking a Mobius strip and
is then using scissors to cut along the

middle line of the strip. Something to
cut. And after cutting around the strip

once, it doesn't fall apart into two
pieces, it's just still a single strip.

Yeah, "single strip", wow, surprise!
Right. And yeah, the same thing could be

done if you took a strip of paper and
twisted it twice before doing it together

and then you start cutting in the middle.
I (incomprehensible) for yourself, if you are

intersted, it's another really surprising
thing that happens if you do that. But the

thing I really wanted to show you is this
one. This was in a tweet I found the other

day and I thought: I have to note this
down into the list of ideas for Operation

Mindfuck, because it's so surprising.This
tweet stated that if you have this, like,

double donut shape and there is a long rod
going through one of the holes like this

is an infinitely long rod where you can't
go over the edges of it. Then this tweet

said, that it's possible to transform this
shape so that the rod goes through both

holes. And I said, what? There's no way
this is possible. And then I clicked on

this tweet and looked at the video. Let's
do that.

[video runs]

Let's look at it again, it's seven seconds.

[video runs]

Right. So by pushing and
squeezing in the right way, you can

actually get to a stage where this rod
goes kind of through both of these holes

and this is not a trick. And this is
really like a property of this shape, that

you can transform it in this way. This is
kind of, like proof by example, which

feels a bit unsatisfying to me. And that
really makes me want to learn more about

topology to, kind of, in a formal way,
state what's going on there. But I guess

the trick to, kind of, understand why this
works, is that somewhere in the in the

middle of this transformation, you get to
the stage where you have this shape,

that's basically like a symmetric... it's
rotational symmetrical. If you hold the

bottom and the top part with your fingers,
then you can imagine that like the middle

of this object is hollow. And there are
three holes going in from the side, one

from the front, one is from the back left
and one is from the back right. And all of

these holes connect to the interior of
this hollowed out shape now. And this rod

is now going through two of those to the back.
The two binded. if you are at this stage, it's up to

you to choose in which direction you want
to go. You can either, like, take the

front hole and, like, pull it out and
stretch it to make it really large and

kind of disappear into the edge of the
shape. And then you get in this situation

where you have this rod picking through
both holes at the back and the front one,

you can't really see it anymore. But you
can also, if you were at this position,

you can choose to take the right
handle of the shape and push it inwards to

go between the other two handles. And then
it's a situation where you arrive,

finally, at the shape like this one, where
it appears to go through only one hole,

but this is just this weird property of
this object that you can do topologic

transformations to go in both directions.
And I think that's really fascinating and

not very intuitive. And there is a second
thing like that, where you start with this

kind of Bretzel-like shape, which is,
like, interlinked into itself. And then

the question is, can you transform this in
a state where the handels are free? And it

turns out of that you can, which is also,
again, really surprising. And this is...

like this diagram shows how to do it. You
would start taking these two holes which

interlink and stretch them out and stretch
them down, make them larger until they

almost touch the bottom here. And then you
have this string of material, which you

can still remain between these two holes.
And then you're at a state where you have

this little twists in the material. Then
you can just start and twist this, twist

once again. It was twice and then it's
free and then you can make the hole

smaller again until you are at this stage.
And I think that's pretty cool, and that's

the topological things I wanted to show.
bleeptrack: That's so cool, o man. I could

look at these forever. Also, that clay
animation of the rod... it's nice to have

really an animation that's a bit easier
to get this...

blinry: still after looking at it for ten times,
it is so (incomprehensible)

bleeptrack: Yeah. Like you can... yeah, completely.
All right. We already reached our last

section, which is about PCB art. So this
year, I tried to learn more about PCB

design and electronics and I found that
nice little community about people who

like to make very artsy PCBs. For example,
here is a person who made a very nice

schematic, an image, what possibilities
you have with PCBs or if you... I'm not sure,

maybe you have had one in hand, a PCB
usually has like a base plate, which has a

yellowish color. And on top and on the
bottom of this plate, you have a copper

layer. And on top of these you can have a
solder mask, which is some sort of plastic

coating that... you can cover contacts
that you ... because we don't want to have

every part of copper traces be open to the
air, open to touch. So you might want to

cover that. So this is the solder mask in
this example. This would be the purple

color. And also, maybe you can have some
screen printing on top. This is usually in

a white or in a black color, in this
example as white. So you can have a lot of

different combinations of these materials,
like you could have the copper and then

put on solder mask, for example, and you
will get a lighter color. This is the

number four in this case. And if you just,
if you mill away the copper and just put

the solder mask onto your base plate, you
will get usually the darker color. Now,

this would be the number five. And then
also you can have either just the base

plate. I think in this example it's number
three and you can also... the copper that

is open to the air or to touch, usually
gets a coating and often this is silver,

gold or some... what's it called in
English - and solder... solder.... Yeah.

Which is also like a silverish color and,
yeah. And the screen printing which is

some white or black. So these five sorts
of colors are your color palette that you

can play with. And when you go to
different manufacturers, you can also get

different solder mask colors. I think that
very typical one would be green. In this

example, it's purple. You can also get
blue or black or white, whatever you want.

And yeah, get your stuff manufactured.
That's super easy. And there's also some

nice examples what else you can do,
because you have these two-layered PCBs

with copper on both sides. You can leave
copper out on one side, only on certain

places and leave it out on the other side
completely so you can get a very fancy

shine through optic. Also, of course, when
you work with electronics, you can very

distinctively place some light sources on
your board, if you want to, if you want to

play with certain ways of lighting. So
that's fun. And also, as you can see on

the right image, you can choose your cut-
out shape anywhere you want, the

manufacturers are usually quite open and
can do, I guess, most of the shapes. And

they can mill in extremely fine details,
especially if they want to mill the copper

on the copper layer. And that's super
interesting because, when you design PCBs,

you often want to have very extremely fine
traces. And this is interesting for art,

of course, because you can engrain
extremely fine details like this very nice

example of a broken, half broken-down
leaf, where the copper layer is used to

have the fine vaines that are still intact
and a solder mask is used to have a bit of

hole leaf cells that are starting to break
down. And the yellowish color that you can

see, that's the color of the base plate.
So you can create extremely fine

details. That's super fun. And then,
there's, for example, boldport. I can

highly recommend boldport. He does a lot
of extremely crazy PCB art. And this one,

I think, is also very nice. It's a
chameleon. And he uses the PCB not only as

the base material, but also he uses it in
a very innovative way, I'd say, because he

uses it, yeah, upright. This is quite
unusual. And you can see that he soldered

the LEDs on the edge of the PCB to give
that chameleon a nice LED back row of

lights, that is super fun. And he also
somehow got two solder mask colors on one

PCB, I'm not sure who he contacted to get
that. That's rather unusual, but it seems

that it can be done. And he also used
resistors for little feet. That's also

really nice. So he thought about
integrating parts into the shape of the

end-design that are usually more
functional and not used esthetically. And

that's what's really interesting and
really nice. And he has a lot of these

projects, and I think you can also buy
them as DIY kits. And that's really nice.

And if you, yeah, if you can combine all
these layers - this is a project that I

came up with, because, as I said, I really
like to do generative art. And of course,

you can then start to write code that
generates shapes and patterns that you can

put on your PCB for esthetic reasons and
these boards that you can see here, they

were produced or created generatically or
procedurally, you would maybe say. And

these three planets, they act as
capacitive touch buttons, so you can touch

on them and it gets recognized by the MCU
on the board. And yeah, it was, it's

really fun to... for me, when I work with
generative art to find a new material, but

you need to figure out how to use it. And
PCBs are just, for me, a super different

material than paper or other stuff. And
it's also really nice that you get these

high quality coatings like gold or silver
that make stuff a lot more valuable and

really nice to look at. So I can highly
recommend the hashtag #pcbart on Twitter

and Instagram. There are a lot of people
posting really, really nice stuff. All

right. And I think it's time for us to
wrap up.

blinry: Yeah. Our last slide, we thought,
because we are sending you into all kinds

of rabbit holes anyway. That's what we're
trying to do. We might, as well, list some

of them very quickly. Mention them, just
maybe see what sticks in your heads. This

is very mean. So, mechanical keyboards:
There are huge communities around building

your own keyboards, like picking different
key-caps, different switches, different

layout. Look into that. Some people are
really interested in skin care and look

into what different products do and their
ingredients, communities are on this.

Amateur astronomy. You can... if you know
where to look, you can find some really

cool things in the galaxy that we can see
without any instruments - if you're in a

good environment. You can try baking your
own bread, make your own sourdough with

bacteria just from the air and use it to
bake your bread. Some people are into

backpacking and optimize for weight, so
they try to have equipment that weighs as

little as possible, so that they don't
have to carry as much and then come up

with really interesting shapes for their
tents, where they spend these thin tarps

basically between trees, for example, with
ropes to sleep under that.Oh yeah. And if

you have... if you're into cooking and you
have these dull knives, which I am always

annoyed about, you can get wet stones,
which is this abrasive material, and you

put water on it and then you can remove
material from your knives to make chop.

There are really good YouTube videos about
that. Yeah. And with that, we say thank

you for listening to this. Greetings to
the future, I guess. I hope you are having

a good Remote Chaos Experience right now.
And yeah, you have a link to the slides

here if you are interested in any of
those. And I guess, yeah, thanks for being

here, and see you soon.
bleeptrack: All right.

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