The Way of Schesa is the next stage of technical and artistic development of the collaborative live-coding duo, The Rebel Scum, aka Obi Wan Codenobi and The Wookie, aka Shawn Lawson and Ryan Ross Smith. We review our near decade long collaboration in terms of necessary personal and technological resilience in the face of large changes, leading to this new direction. This collaboration is based on an audiovisual live-coding practice addressing evolving aesthetics and open-source collaborative live-coding systems. Of particular note with The Way of Schesa is The Rebel Scum moving away from the fast, EDM-inspired approach associated with the AlgoRave scene to something a more mellow, more internal, more calming: The AlgoChill.
Shawn Lawson is an experiential media artist creating the computational sublime. He performs under the pseudonym Obi-Wan Codenobi where he live-codes real-time computer graphics with his open source software, The Force. Lawson’s other work explores with a range of technology: stereoscopy, camera vision, touch screens, game controllers, hand-held devices, random number generators; and output formats: print, sculpture, mobile apps, instruction sets, animation, and interactive.
He has performed at Radical dB, Spain; ICLI, Portugal; ICLC, UK; ISEA, Canada; GENERATE!, Germany; CultureHub, NYC, and more. Shawn’s artwork has exhibited or screened in museums, galleries, festivals, and public space in England, Denmark, Russia, Italy, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, and Canada; locally in ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE ProCams, ACM MM, The Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Chelsea Art Museum, Eyebeam, Aperture Foundation Gallery, Nicholas Robinson Gallery, MIT, OSU, ASU, and LTU. He has given workshops in programming or live coding in Europe and the USA. Shawn is published in the proceedings of ICLC, ACM CC, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SIGCHI, ACM MM. Lawson’s collaborative, Crudeoils, critiques structures of power: surveillance, economic exploitation, and authoritarian corruption. This collaborative is represented by Dean Jensen Gallery.
Lawson has received support from from the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, the Experimental Television Center’s Finishing Funds Program, Kamel Lazaar Foundation, CultureHub’s Micro-Residency, and Signal Culture’s Toolmakers in Residency. Lawson studied fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University and École Nationale Supèrieure des Beaux-Arts. He received his MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He is an Associate Professor of Computer Visualization in the Department of Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and selectively consults for independent artists and entertainment R&D branches.
Ryan Ross Smith is a composer, performer, sound designer, engineer and educator currently based in Roscoe, New York. Smith has performed throughout the US, Europe and UK, including performances at MoMA and PS1 [NYC] and Le Centre Pompidou [Paris, FR], has had his music performed throughout North America, Iceland, Denmark, Australia and the UK, has presented his work and research at conferences including NIME, ISEA, ICLI, ICLC, SMF, ACMC and TENOR, and has lectured at various colleges and universities. As a sound designer/engineer, Smith has produced work for ESPN (30 for 30 Podcast), Meadowlark, ABC (David Blaine’s “Drowned Alive”), Kassen Brothers Production, Voltage Control Records, and WNYC’s Studio360. In the academic world, Smith is known for his work with Animated Notation, and his Ph.D. research website is archived at animatednotation.com. Current & recent projects include The Rebel Scum [live-coding duo with visual artist Shawn Lawson], Duets [a series of remotely-produced duets with musical friends from around the globe], Lines and Patterns [musique concrete disguised as ambient music], Green Dome [with Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer], Ross Farwell [IDM/Breakbeat], Sequential Switch [daily modular synthesizer project (2019)] and Golden Everlasting [modular synthesizer-based dance music]. Smith is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the State University of New York at Oneonta.
