Phillip Trelford's Array

A few backs I visited New York City taking in some of the many sites like the Empire State Building for the views, Grand Central Terminal for the oysters, Central Park for waffles & dinges, Harry’s Bar for steaks, the American Museum of Natural History for stars and stuffed animals and the MoMA for modern art.

MoMA

The department of Architecture and Design at the MoMA had 14 video games on display including PacMan. Are video games art? They sure are.

I also found an interesting piece by Philippe Decrauzat entitled D.T.A.B.T.W.H.A.H.E.

Here’s a short F# snippet to generate similar text blocks:

// Generate text from Philippe Decrauzat's D.T.A.B.T.W.H.A.H.E. 2010
let print (s:string) =
    [|
    for y in 0..s.Length-1 ->
        [|for x in 0..y-1 -> s.[x]
            for x in y..s.Length-1 -> s.[y]
        |]
        |> fun cs -> 
            System.String(cs) + 
            System.String(cs |> Array.rev |> Seq.skip 1 |> Seq.toArray) 
    |] 
    |> fun ys -> [|yield! ys; yield! (Array.rev ys |> Seq.skip 1)|] 
    |> String.concat "\r\n"
print "A HAPPY ENDING"

F# for Trading

While I was in New York I also gave a talk on F# for Trading at the local F# User Group:

Thanks for all the kind feedback.

Tate Modern

I work round from the corner from the Tate Modern in London. Last week I popped in and on my exit through the gift shop I picked up a book with the title Null Object and a postcard of a painting called Hyena Stomp by Frank Stella:

I liked it as it reminded me of the end of level sequence in Robotron 2084 & Llamatron:

As an aside, I've been having a lot of fun recently making bleeps and beeps, more often found in 80s video games, with Korg's Monotribe analogue synth.

Inspired by Llamtron I’ve created a simple animated version of Hyena Stomp in Silverlight:

Music

Why not sit back and relax with some art inspired music:

• On the Run by Pink Floyd
• Art Bitch by CSS
• Modern Art by Art Brut