Nickolas Aleksandar Nikolic
I am a computer program developer, and artist working in Milwaukee, WI USA. I am internationally published in numerous media.
Some addresses of note with my work:
Play with Tableau
Animation in Python OpenGL
WebGL GLSL Shader Experiment on a Cube
Fun with HTML5 Canvas Harmonigraphs!
Tic-Tac-Toe in an Expert System
Originally using a neural approach, I found feature engineering of the expert system to be more accurate and frankly, for this small problem: smaller. Neural has a place and is here for the long run, but so does feature engineering.
WebGL GLSL Experiment
In any of these experiments, click to see how they start. They can take a while to mature, but the early stages are good, too.
WebGL GLSL Experiment
WebGL GLSL Experiment
WebGL GLSL Experiment
GLSL Shader Experiment
Randomness Animation
The following animation is random color put down in structured paths. (click on dark area to restart)
Work with the JS Sound API (Clicky, but watch your volume setting! It could be too loud):
GLSL Experiment
The following WebGL GLSL experiment is a flat 3D Plane with a program running over the surface.
WebGL GLSL Shader Experiment
Recent render in Blender
Exacting CSS Animations in Branding Campaign:
Branding/Packaging Excercise
The modest brand is a case study of a disruptive brand that wishes to prove it’s worth by it’s performance. For those of you who don’t have green thumbs: this level of NPK is impossible to achieve without explosion, however this company proved to be able to go about it from a biotechnical way in the amino-acid payload.
Live Canvas Image Processing in JavaScript:
My Most Popular Augmented Reality projects, Breathe Fire, has just flipped the counter on 10 million views!
When in the effect on Facebook Messenger or Instagram, open your mouth and a fire animation spins out of your mouth!
Grandmother, and other works make up 11+ million views on Unsplash.com
This award-winning photo is just tipped the scales toward culture-giving, one viewer at a time. Also, the whole set of images here are included in the NCOA book, Aging Well For All, published in 2023.
In the detail of the image, your eyes slide to discover. Each edge of contrast proves unique. I may choose from a number of qualities of light to display form: a strongly directional light from the side raises the texture, for instance. Constantly vanishing and returning to attention is the identity, particularly of the aging, where I try to discover.
Particularly with regard to the aging, I turn eyes keen to find both the acceptance of one’s virtues and beauty. It is hard to grow older, but it carries good dignity, too. I am amongst the best storytellers of the acceptance of circumstance in aging on earth.
Still a favorite of mine:
Not many know I compose music, it’s a hobby I would like to pronounce more often!
EPA/DNR/CDC Visualization
The following visualization shows the 2022 incidence of liquid toxic dumps against the incidents of fishing catches large enough to keep and eat around the state of Wisconsin. In yellow are the buildup of toxic chemical, in red dot are the reported fish kept to eat.
NYPD Out-of-Jurisdiction Arrests Year-to-Date in D3.js
The following graphic shows in color the out of jurisdiction arrests in NY, NY. In grey are in-jurisdiction. Made with thankfully open NYPD data on Data.gov in D3.js
A sampling of photographs from the last years:
love
Black Lives Matter
This morning I was presented with a challenge to write on the Black Lives Matter movement.
AntiFa (anti-fascism) and BLM have had some press in our area that was difficult. I would like to make a statement about it: All Lives Matter.
AntiFa (again, anti-fascism) hate none, whereas the Blue Lives Matter movement has literally taken hold on the premise that black people shoot them. This is not very often true.
According to data at the FBI regarding shootings of the police, a total of about 300 have happened. I am unable to find police shootings of civilians at this point in the development of the FBI data. I will review it when it is available.
I suggest forgetting the unrealistic idea off defunding the police.
Instead, disarm the increasingly violent police.
I have done a little bit of research regarding the subject of unarmed police. As it so turns: unarmed police are 190 times less likely to be shot in the line of duty than armed ones. Less than 20 police were harmed or killed in the line of duty while unarmed.
The more heavily armed, the more likely harmed, according to the data.
Erik Kaconis and Improv at The Interchange Theater Co-op
1975: George Carlin opened at the humble beginnings of the Saturday Night Live. Using a break from character in order to drive surprise, the now iconic first utterance of “Live from New York…” was said with a smile. It was 3 years before NBC took notice of the fledgling troupe to give Johnny Carson a weekend. Blasting them into production on national television and producing a platform for greats such as Robin Williams, Danny DeVito, and Rita Rudner.
In just as humble a beginning from Milwaukee, on any given Friday or Saturday at 7:30pm: Milwaukee has a new force in underground comedy. It’s thoughtful, barking, snickering laughter.
Erik Kaconis hosts a randomized improv comedy show interesting enough to warm a stodgy critic’s heart, but also calculated enough to combat the rigamarole of larger less esoteric acts such as ComedySportz while remaining PG-13 accessible. Truthfully, it promises good times for almost all ages (with a stocked bar – parental guidance sought)
Erik’s concept at the Interchange Theater Co-op is interesting. Part student, part professional, the coop members perform every weekend riled by their audiences.
Topics include anything that the audience can surmise. They tag team and team-work through their skits in ways both nuanced and also sometimes obvious. If the crazy is getting too crazy, or if the out-of-control is getting too out-of-control, each team-mate signals a need for help or the ability to help in a meaningful tug-of-laughter-push-pulling for the show to go on.
It’s $10 at the door. Season tickets $100.
Erik teaches comedy clinics and offers shares into the theater to support it.
628 N 10th Street Milwaukee, WI 53233
Whore’s Manifesto: A Book Review
Whore’s Manifesto is an anthology of writings by sex workers, mostly poetry. It truly tries to do well by its writers but sometimes falls into a pit of 2 dimensionality by the writing chosen.
It’s angry, and only angry. But there are some atypical flavors of anger.
The summation of the anthology: hypocrisy hurts and be responsible with the hearts and bodies of those that serve you.
These men and women tell their story in a progressively more curt tone to customers that mostly use them. They talk of their definition of love being skewed, they say that not a single sex-act is a “mercy-fuck” should it be for pay.
The poetry of the anthology is not so much inspired as it is agonized and tired of their relationships with others. That is the only piece of magic in the book: it allows a peek into the hopes for change of the sex-worker. Mostly it is bitter sarchasm.
There are jokes poked at the men and women that see them: case and point, the poem, “Seducing God,” written by Mason, a male prostitute, sneers in bitter laughter at the priests who hire him, then confuse him for sinner over service provider.
All of the poetry carries the same thrilling bloody discontent at hypocrisy of those that hire them.
Another poem — the first of the book — by L’Crave speaks of her having been on the internet before being allowed by her parents to have an email. The poem then starts a squirming rapid cadence of pedo-imagery to help one feel the guilt of her first customer who took her virginity from her before she had developed value for it.
Whore’s Manifesto is a book of the mistrust and anger that those feel in the sex work industry. From dancers to prostitutes, they all feel as if they have been dealt a hand short a card and that they have played their only ace in the form of sex work.
Its thesis is to be kinder and more responsible for your relationships, paid or not.
cherish.bond now live
A quick work in the JS video API – and super cute – is at cherish.bond! Thanks to Pexels for offering CC video. As is always appreciated.
Px.js Javascript Library live
I have just open sourced a canvas image data library and it is live on my Github account. The core of the perhaps.observer experiential website. The px.js library is super easy to use, and should contribute to innovation on the web. I’m looking forward to seeing what others do with my work!
then.rest now live.
Another sketch site, this time at then.rest; I wanted to learn the HTML5 Audio API. I consider this to be great work; I had always wanted to bring comfortable and polite sound into experiences on the web. Have fun and Merry Christmas! Another sketch I put together over Christmas is perhaps.observer.
comfy.fit live
A few quick animation sketch sites to bide time between projects. One is found at comfy.fit I tend to use these periods for sharpening skills and checking out what processes might be fruitful.
Thomas Mertins and Chess
Brewed Awakenings Café in Milwaukee’s Brady Street community closed for business recently. I realized that for years I used to meet Tom there.
I had a friend in a young man named Thomas Mertins. He was utterly shrewd, pedantic, and a decidedly good young man. I realized this morning that I hadn’t heard of him in some time. Possibly the city and I have grown more healed of his loss.
He was well known by many as a chess prodigy – from the age of 13 he was considered one of the strongest players of the game of chess in the world – but I spent a good deal of time speaking to him. We would meet once or twice a week for three hours or more to play chess and talk about whatever came to mind. It was a good friendship for about 5 years. In his absence, I still consider the young man to be an old friend.
Tom had a notion of excellence that was curt, but a notion of realistic decency that was deeply ingrained in his personality. Once, I had attempted to quit smoking and thought to switch to less enjoyable self-rolled cigarettes. He simply stated, “Roll thin cigarettes.” in a poke at the absurdity of it. If I were to quit, that goal would be no cigarettes, not thin cigarettes. That was 20 years ago. I still smoke.
He and I lost touch when he started working towards a marriage. This is an aspect of adulthood that many decry and few explain, but people have to implode their relationships towards planned families, and so don’t have the time to discuss philosophy for days on end.
The relationships put a particular pressure on him to succeed financially while the world was less successful on the whole. The throes of the Great Recession of ‘2008’ were already underway and he was unable to support a lifestyle that he thought was moving towards success. The frank truth of the matter was very few people could. Our generation grew with the Dotcom/Startup expectation of wealth. But, it must come from somewhere, doesn’t it. And it more and more often doesn’t. More often than not.
He took his own life ultimately for economic woe and this deeply saddens me. But something about researching him for this writing today alarms me. This is: we forget too completely. Healing from a loss is good, mourning that loss is good. But loss should never be complete. In the case of Tom, I’m unable to find his chess games to discuss for this writing or any other images of him. The internet forgets a good man if I don’t write this.
Remember him.
The life of just one tree now published on mimic.love
I have put a simple treatise on the importance of mindfulness at the URL: mimic.love
It is an animation in HTML5 and JS canvas driven not by seconds and milliseconds, but by days and years.
Take a look at it! Check out the code, you may find it’s meanings fun!
The Work of Mike Nagel of Milwaukee, WI USA
The work of Mike Nagel was a testament to the possible. I knew the man well. He was a constant force to the good in the arts of Milwaukee, WI USA. His life was interesting, but all his efforts amounted to pushing what’s possible into the world.
He held a certain moral responsibility in his work. I think of the comic book series he produced on the life and decisions of Jesus. While I saw the work being done, I had never the chance to read the finished work, the funding for the comic book was pulled. And the Streeters Cartoon of which he was producer and animator also held an adolescent inner-city moral code to proof. The stories are important. However, this effort, was also pulled due to funding.
During his life his talent, and the talent of many, are often held in suspension by the funding apparatus of the arts. Allow me to point out that the NEA.gov has released under refreshed funding from the Biden Administration a slew of grants that can enable work in the arts. Use them.
Poetry, the most saturated meaning in English
I have had a meaningful relationship with the work of the great poet: Adrianne Rich, for decades. She wrote emphatically on the passion of words “fitting over meaning like a skin”. I have always found her hope for the world to be inspirational.
Allow me to bring attention to her best work: a work of editorial anthology, “The Best American Poems of 1996”. In this work of curation, she highlights the fight we all work through to achieve a meaningful self respect in spite of the life we are provided by the structures of the world.
Case and point: the opening poem of the anthology: I am not a witness. This poem talks of the loss of the less fortunate through the execution system. It cries. It’s a listing of the final meals by it’s preparer, the prison cook. All the while, a cadence of sorrow in repeated remarks to what could be different in the world.
Then there is the poem: The Cancer Garden. This short poem sings to grit and hope in the cancer ward.
All of the poems reflect not just Rich’s ardor, but our own, should we look to the skies rather than to the end, or to profit, or to anything at all transient. She is a poet no longer with us, but dammit, she has dignity.
Two Pablos from Catalonia: Casals & Picasso
When I consider excellence in adversity, I think to the master cellist Pablo Casals. So good a man, he supported his whole symphony during the German occupation of Europe. Pablo Casal’s genius was myriad: he assessed the anatomy of the forearm in order to better commit ‘energy’ to the instrument and also took mission to teach others. Just a warm story of excellence in the adversity of WW2. A truly great man.
Picasso, on the other hand, was quite a dick. He was massively talented, but a dick! His first daughter was convinced that his absence was due to being locked in a room askance from the household. Picasso needed to ultimately quit the hype of his persona and pay attention to his responsibilities.
Stands4 Network API for poetry.
I have had a few requests to explain the API that powers this site’s special effects. Allow me to introduce the Stands4 API (application programming interface) found at https://www.poetry.com/
I use this particular interface, and with php (simply guzzlehttp/guzzle library) load the poetry from the poetry.com api with api credentials you get from Stands4. Be careful not to use the free api more than 100 times per day, it will boot you.
A caching apparatus should be used. Depending upon your technology, research caching the text you get from the api. I personally simply store it in a text file at the server, later requests check the text file to see if it is older than a half hour, and then if not: spit it out to the requestor, if so, start the process over.
There is something to be said about the vision and innovativeness of Stands4: IT processes must be considered from where the greater population sits. We often lose focus of who really matters in IT, and that isn’t just the profit-producing employer, IT must consider all people to be ends in themselves.
For the love of god, please use your skills in unusual ways in the greater good’s service.
Rothko: a great purveyor of personhood.
The Rothko painting, as you may have seen, is to me a very special invitation to the inside of yourself. By looking through the painting, your eyes tire of the generally neutral tone and as such grow to a blindness that is unique to his work. His studied notions of color exhaustion creates a field of neutral color in your vision that gives a hard-won reward of vision of humaneness. Your exact vision is dulled and your color peripheral vision takes hold. Unique on earth. You. Yet, shared. Rothko is master of this trick.
This is due to the color receptors of the eye being aggregated around the ball of the sclera of the eye (the white part) while exact vision is tone-sensitive rods within the precise vision surrounding your optical nerve. Rothko didn’t study anatomy that deeply, but found a relativist haven in color misperception.
And they are, and you are, truly unique and shared.
A response to a paper by Beat Signer I read this morning:
I just spent my morning reading an IT and UX paper by Beat Signer (and others). The paper, entitled, “ArtVis: Combining Advanced Visualisation and Tangible Interaction for the Exploration, Analysis and Browsing of Digital Artwork Collections” discussed an experiment to improve usability of the venerable Web Gallery of Art found at https://www.wga.hu/
What I found especially interesting about this paper was that the work it described sought a more responsible display of information to the history it presented.
I was taken by surprise by the clear speech in the following quote from the paper:
The contribution of ArtVis is twofold. In a first step, we have defined visualisation requirements for the exploration of the WGA data set. In a next step, ArtVis has been extended with a tangible user interface to attract and stimulate end users in museum settings.
It’s interesting because it frankly uses the word “contribution” in light of the UX projects’ utility. This is something we often don’t broach upon in the work of UX: it is a form of kindness to consider the frame of reference of our counterpart, the user.
We have come to a head in UX, reliant on large corporations to lead the way into information consumption patterns. I refer to UI Kits and standards documents such as Google’s Material. This need not be the case: we should be thinking of not the least time to success, but of the well-being of our users regardless of the investment of time.
Too often, we use such tools as the UI kit of Google Material habitually, considering the UI/UX simply handled. But it has grown tired a pattern. Front end developers should better consider the art and designers of UI should better consider the technology. Put simply, it’s not about us.
I applaud the attitude of bringing the concept of contribution to the consumption of art media. If you are to check the paper, itself, the application developed succeeds in improving the chances of virtual museum goers understanding and finding meaning in the myriad works of art.
The paper may be found at the following link:
The Boox is an incredible note-taking device.
The Boox is excellent now that it has Google Play on it. I find it my favorite reading device as well as a formidable note-taking device. Those of you students irritated by the sheer amount of books and notebooks you must carry around should look into getting one. Color is available, but it’s still a small screen. Frankly, the bigger a writing surface, the better.
I have applied to the Canada Art Council for a grant to do open source software in music.
For the Canuk artist living in the USA, it may not be apparent, but these resources out of Canada are still available to you. The NEA is in a sadder state then ever after being shocked into submission through the last 15 years of Republican ‘leadership’. You may find help there. CanadaCouncil.ca
I’ll keep readers abreast of how the process goes. The application for both peer judging as well as grants was pretty easy. Well worth looking into.