Signwave
Tool palette screen shot Document window screen shot Sounds palette screen shot

Scribbles palette screen shot

Signwave Autoshop
© Copyright 1999 Signwave / Adrian Ward

Autoshop is the culmination of over a year's work on many autonomous, A.I., generative and 'creative' studies. It brings together many important aspects of research regarding creativity, perception, notions of value and/or authenticity. As well as providing a central focal point for a 'generative' multi-media system, it is parodying interface design and (both traditional and new media) software development.

Autoshop takes the clean-cut, productive interface of a well-known commercial software product (Adobe® Photoshop® in case you hadn't noticed) and imbues it with ideas of self-generative, autonomous, (creative?) influence and activity. Autoshop is capable of being both a tool for generating digital images under (variable) human control, and a play-pen for artificial/digital lifeforms, A.I. bots, and pseudo-chaos systems. The output is entertaining, startling and thoroughly usable.

Other Software
A new piece of software, Signwave™ Auto-Illustrator, is being developed for Win32 and MacOS platforms. Auto-Illustrator is a parody of Adobe™ Illustrator, and works with vector-based graphics, making it more ideal for professional design use. Currently a development pre-release version (0.1d) is available for free download.

Further Reading
Users interested in reading more about the processes involved in the creation of Signwave Autoshop should read How I Drew One Of My Pictures and The Authorship of Generative Art and possibly take a look at generative.net.

There is now extensive documentation of the interface functionality of Autoshop. Please be aware that this document totals about 400k in size.

Please enjoy this software product. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated, too: adrian@signwave.co.uk

Features

  • Loads common QuickTime image formats: PICT/TIFF/GIF/JPG etc
  • Saves PICT format files
  • Extensible plug-in system allows you to download new plugins and install them easily
  • New plugins will be made available from this web page
  • Examples of plugins: Instant New Media FX, Coolify, Zoom Blur, A.I. bot finger painting (and more)
  • Examples of tools: Scribbling tool, thick paint bucket, Cigarette lighter, Wrinkle tool, Bugs add/remove
  • Creative palettes: Sounds (listen to your pictures!), Colours (Your Mac's favourite colours?), Text and Scribbles.
  • 'Easy-to-please' A.I. happy/sad face (see how the bot 'likes' your image at any moment)
  • Autopilot creativity. Let the chaos engine draw your picture for you!

    And much more.

    Downloading and installing
    Signwave Autoshop is available currently for Macintosh computers only. It ideally requires a fast PowerPC processor and plenty of memory. The application requires a minimum of 16 Mb memory to run, suggesting 32 Mb as standard.

    autoshop-100.img.sit.hqx v1.0.0 (Macintosh PPC) 2,163,689 bytes
    autoshop-100.sit.sea v1.0.0 (Macintosh PPC) 2,344,334 bytes

    There has been a lot of positive encouragement to develop a Win32 port of this software. If you would like to add your voice, please drop us a line.

    Any new plugins you get should be copied into the Plug-Ins folder where your application resides.

    Copyright
    Written by Adrian Ward. This software forms part of a project for the Media Theoretical Frameworks module at MediaLab Arts, Plymouth University. Not to be exchanged for money. This is parody software and must not be distributed as commercial software.

    Distribution
    As this is parody software, it cannot, under any circumstances, be distributed in exchange for money or cash alternatives. It is also software which is developed for the use of the University of Plymouth, England. The software remains the property of Adrian Ward, Signwave, and the University of Plymouth at all times. However, permission to distribute the software freely is granted to you by the author, provided all original files are distributed along with the application in an unmodified form.

    For press/media enquiries, please email adrian@signwave.co.uk.

    Legal Notice
    "Adobe" AND "Photoshop" ARE TRADEMARKS OF ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED. THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT ENDORSED, RELATED TO, OR CERTIFIED BY ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED IN ANY WAY. COPYRIGHTS AND TRADEMARKS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. NO DELIBERATE INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT OR TRADEMARK RIGHTS IS INTENDED OR IMPLIED IN ANY WAY. "Signwave" AND "Autoshop" ARE TRADEMARKS OF SIGNWAVE.