NAME

Art::World - Modeling of creative processes

SYNOPSIS

use Art::World;

my $artwork = Art::World->new_artwork(
  creator => [ $artist, $another_artist ]  ,
  owner   => 'smonff'
  title   => 'Corrupted art institutions likes critical art'
  value   => 100, );

my $museum = Art::World->new_museum(
  money => 1000,
  name  => 'Contemporary Museum of Art::World'
);

$museum->acquire( $artwork );

DESCRIPTION

Art::World is an attempt to model and simulate a system describing the interactions and influences between the various agents of the art world.

It tries to draw a schematization of the interactions between art, institutions, influences and unexpected parameters during the social processes of artistic creation.

More informations about the purposes and aims of this project can be found in it's Art::World::Manual. Especially, the HISTORY and the OBJECTIVES section could be very handy to understand how this is an artwork using programming.

MOTIVATIONS

This project is a self-teaching experiment around the modern Perl object-oriented programming toolkit. In late 2020, I read a bit about Corrina and immediatly wanted to restart and experiment my old Art::World project. While searching for something somewhat close to Corrina, since Corrina was only a draft and RFC, I discovered the Zydeco toolkit by Toby Inkster and immediatly felt very enthusiastic to use it to implement my idea. I hope it is a decent example of the possibilities this wonderful framework make possible.

It is possible that this toolkit may be used by an art management software as it could be needed in an art galery or a museum.

ROLES

Abstraction

This is were all kind of weird phenomenons between abstract artistic entities happen. See the Manual about how it works.

Active

Is used to dissociate behaviors belonging to performers as opposed to the public. Provide a participate method.

Buyer

All those behaviors and attributes are encapsulated in the Buyer role because there is no such thing as somebody in the art world that buy but doesn't sale.

The aquire method is requiring some money. The money is provided by the Market role.

$collector->acquire( $artwork );

Those behaviors are delegated to the change_owner() method, and to the pay() method from the Market role.

When a Collector acquire() an Artwork, the Artwork ArrayRef of owners is automatically cleared and substituted by the new owner(s). acquire() will remove the value of the Artwork from the owner's money.

$artwork->change_owner( $self );

When the paiement occurs, the money is allocated to all the artwork owners involved and removed from the buyer's fortune.

$self->pay( $artwork );

It delegate the payment to the pay() method of the Market role. If the payment is provided by an individual Buyer, only one payment is done an the money is dispatched to all the sellers. If a Collective buy the good, each member procede to a paiement from the Co-investors point of view.

Collectionable

The collectionnable provide a series of attributes for the ownership and collectionability of artworks.

If it's collectionable, it can go to a Collector collection or in a Museum. A collectionable item is automatically owned by it's creator.

Collectionable provides a change_owner() multi method that accepts either Collectors or Coinvestors as an unique parameter. It takes care of setting appropriately the new artwork owners and delegate the removal of the item from the seller's collection.

A private methode, $remove_from_seller_collection is also available to take care of the removal of the to-be-sold Artwork in the seller collection. Since those can be owned by many persons, and that Artists can own their own artworks, but for now cannot be collectors, they are excluded from this treatment.

Collective

They do stuff together. You know, art is not about lonely Artists in their Workshop.

This has first been designed for collectors, but could be used to activate any kind of collective behavior.

This is quite a problem because what if a group of people wants to buy? We have a Coinvestor class implementing the Collective role that provide a collective-acquirement method.

It's acquire() multi method provide a way to collectively buy an item by overriding the Buyer role method. Coinvestor is a class inheriting from Collector that implement the Collective role so it would be able to collectively acquire Works.

Note that the signatures are different between Buyer and Collective roles:

$collector->acquire( $artwork );
  # ==> using the method from the Buyer role

$coinvestors->acquire({ art => $artwork, collective => $coinvestors });
  # ==> using the method from the Collective role

Just pass a self-reference to the coinvestor object and they will be able to organize and buy together.

Crud

The Crud role makes possible to serialize most of the entities. For this to be possible, they need to have a corresponding table in the database, plus they need to not have a unserializable? tag attribute. A Zydeco tag role is a role without behavior that can only be checked using does.

The Crud role is made possible thanks to Teng, a simple DBI wrapper and O/R Mapper. Teng is used through it's schema loader that directly instanciate an object schema from the database.

When trying to update a value, it is necessary to pass a table name and a hashref of attributes corresponding to the columns values. The table name is not case sensitive when using Art::World Crud helpers.

my $row = $self->dbh
  ->insert( 'agent', {
    name => $artist->name,
    reputation => $artist->reputation });

Note that it is extremely important that the testing of the database should be done in the t/crud.t file. If you want to test database or model functionnalities in other tests, remind to create objects by specifiying the config parameter that use the test.conf file: only the database referenced in test.conf will be available on cpantesters and art.db wont be available there, only t/test.db is available.

Event

All the necessary attributes and methodes for having fun between Art::world's Agents.

Exhibit

Role for Places that display some Artworks.

Fame

Fame role provide ways to control the aura and reputation that various Agents, Places or Works have. Cannot be negative.

It has an handy bump_fame() method that self-bump the fame count. It can be used in three specific maneers:

pass a PositiveNum

The fame will go higher

pass a NegativeNum

The fame he fame will go lower

no parameter

In that case the value defined by $self->config->{ FAME }->{ DEFAULT_BUMP } will be used to increase the reputation.

my $artist = Art::World->new_artist(
  reputation => 0.42,
  name => 'Questular Rontok'
);

say $artist->bump_fame;               # ==>  1.42
say $artist->bump_fame( 0.0042 );     # ==>  1.4242

If you try to update the fame to a negative value, nothing happens and a nice warning is displayed.

The fame can be consummed by pretty much everything. A Place or and Agent have a fame through it's reputation, and an Artwork too through it's aura.

Classes that consume Fame can have two different kind of attributes for storing the Fame:

aura

For Works only.

reputation

For Agents, Places, etc.

Identity

Provide id and a name attributes.

Invitation

Language

Useful when criticizing art or participating to all kind of events, especially fo networking.

Manager

A role for those who take care of exhibitions and other organizational matters. See how being a Manager influence an Agent in the CLASSES section.

Market

It is all about offer, demand and money. It is possible that a day, the discourse that some people have can influence the Market.

It provide a pay() method that can be used by entities consumming this role to exchange artworks on the market. This method accept an Artwork as an and a Collector as parameters. It smartly find how many people bought the good and to how many sellers the money should be dispatched.

Showable

Only an object that does the Showable role can be exhibited. An object should be exhibited only if it reached the Showable stage.

Space

Could limit the number of person attending an event for example

Underground

Provide an experiment() method.

Writing

This is much more than small talk.

CLASSES

Agent

They are the activists of the Art World, previously known as the Wildlife.

my $agent = Art::World->new_agent(
  id         => 1,
  name       => Art::World::Util->new_person->fake_name,
  reputation => 10 # Would default to zero if none specified
);

$agent->participate;    # ==>  "That's interesting"

A generic entity that can be any activist of the Art::World. Provides all kind of Agent classes and roles.

The Agent got an a networking( $people ) method that makes possible to leverage it's relationships. When it is passed and ArrayRef of various implementation classes of Agents (Artist, Curator, etc.) it bumps the reputation attributes of all of 1/10 of the Agent with the highest reputation. If this reputation is less than 1, it is rounded to the $self->config->{ FAME }->{ DEFAULT_BUMP } constant.

The bump coefficient can be adjusted in the configuration through { FAME }->{ BUMP_COEFFICIENT }.

There is also a special way of bumping fame when Managers are in a Networking activity: The influence() method makes possible to apply the special $self->config->{ FAME }->{ MANAGER_BUMP } constant. Then the Agents reputations are bumped by the MANAGER_BUMP value multiplicated by the highest networking Manager reputation. This is what the influence() method returns:

return $self->config->{ FAME }->{ MANAGER_BUMP } * $reputation;

The default values can be edited in art.conf.

Art

Will be what you decide it to be depending on how you combine all the entities.

This is where we are waiting to receive some unexpected parameters: in other words, an INI file can be provided.

Article

Something in a Magazine of Website about Art, Exhibitions, etc.

Artist

In the beginning of their carreer they are usually underground and produce experimental art, but this can change in time.

my $artist = Art::World->new_artist(
  name => 'Andy Cassrol',
);

say $artist->is_homogenic;
#==> false

After getting collected, artists become homogenic.

$artist->is_underground if not $artist->has_collectors;

The artist got a lots of wonderful powers:

create

When the basic abstractions of Art are articulated, a creation occurs. It doesn't mean that it will create an Artwork, because it requires the intervention of other Agents. The Artist creates through a work concept. This articulation can group the different attributes of the Abstraction role: discourse, file, idea, process, project and time.

have_idea

All day long

Artwork

The base thing producted by artists. Artwork is subclass of Work that have a Showable and Collectionable role. They are usually considered as goods by the Market but are also subject of appreciation by the Public. A lot of Event happen around them.

The collectionable role provide their value while they have their own attributes for material and size. The later limits the amount of atworks that can be put in a Place's space during an Event.

Book

Where a lot of theory is written by Critics

Coinvestor

Coinvestor extend the Collector class by providing an arrayref attribute of members through the Collective role. This role makes also possible to invest in artworks collectively.

Collector

A Collector is mostly an Agent that consume the Buyer and Market roles and that have a collection attribute.

my $collector = Art::World
  ->new_collector(
    name => Art::World::Util->new_person->fake_name,
    money => 10_000,
    id => 4 );

my $artwork = Art::World
  ->new_artwork(
    creator => $artist  ,
    title   => 'Destroy capitalism',
    value   => 9_999 );

$collector->acquire( $artwork ),

say $collector->money;
#==> 1

say $_->title for ( $collector->collection->@* );
#==> Destroy capitalism

Concept

Concept is an abstract class that does the Abstraction role. It should be extended but cannot be instanciated.

Critic

Curator

A special kind of Agent that can select Artworks, define a thematic, setup everything in the space and write a catalog. They mostly do Exhibition.

Director

Exhibition

An Event that is organised by a Curator.

my $exhibition = Art::World->new_exhibition(
  curator => [ $curator ],
  title   => $title,
  creator => [ $curator ]);

Gallery

Just another kind of Place, mostly commercial.

Since it implements the Buyer role, a gallery can both acquire() and sell().

Major place for Agent-networking> activities. Always check it's space though!

Idea

When some abstractions starts to become something in the mind of an Agent.

my $art_concept = Art::World->new_idea(
  discourse => 'I have idead. Too many ideas. I store them in a file.',
  file => [ $another_concept, $weird_idea ],
  idea => 'idea',
  name => 'Yet Another Idea',
  process => [],
  project => 'My project',
  time => 5,
 );

Institution

A Place that came out of the Underground.

Magazine

Museum

Yet another kind of Place, an institution with a lot of Artworks in the basement.

Opening

An Event where you can consume free treats and speak with other networkers from the art world.

my $t = Art::World::Util->new_time( source => '2020-02-16T08:18:43' );
my $opening_event = Art::World->new_opening(
  place     => $place,
  datetime => $t->datetime,
  name => 'Come See Our Stuff',
  smalltalk => $chat,
  treat     => [ 'Red wine', 'White wine', 'Peanuts', 'Candies' ]);

Place

A Place must invite() all kind of Agents that produce Work or other kind of valuable social interactions. Depending of the total reputation of the Place it will determine it's underground status: when going out of the underground, it will become an institution.

Playground

A generic space where Art::World Agents can do all kind of weird things.

Public

They participate and visit events.

School

Sex

Squat

A place were art world agents are doing things. A squat that is not underground anymore become an institution.

Theory

When some abstract concept turns to some said or written stuff.

Website

Work

There are not only Artworks. All Agents produce various kind of work or help consuming or implementing Art.

It got an aura attribute, see the Fame about it or read about Walter Benjamin.

Workshop

A specific kind of Playground where you can build things tranquilly.

AUTHOR

Sébastien Feugère <sebastien@feugere.net>

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to ack in any way, including Adrien Lucca, Toby Inkster, Ezgi Göç, Pierre Aubert, Seb. Hu-Rillettes, Joseph Balicki, Nicolas Herubel and Nadia Boursin-Piraud.

This project was made possible by the greatness of the Zydeco toolkit.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2006-2021 Sebastien Feugère

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the Artistic License 2.0.

cpanm Art::World

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Art::World