Announcing Aesthetic Inc.
November 18, 2024
@jeffrey
I'm excited to announce the incorporation of Aesthetic Inc., a company
founded to support the development and growth of the Aesthetic Computer
project which I began coding in April
2021.
Aesthetic Inc.'s mission is to lift the computational literacy level of mass audiences by making computing more
playable and accessible through the invention, distribution and productization of new media instruments.
After 10+ years making and teaching in the software arts, I desired new tools to publish and connect my work
across platforms and device types, and educate more effectively through an integrated system. Today AC is
growing outside interest in the field through viral mobile experiences and raising the skills of future students
through an innovatively accessible software stack.
Built as a mobile-first runtime and social network, the aesthetic.computer domain and apps are home to art and
music-making utilities, toys, games and a budding community passionate about the medium.
AC's client interface is designed to function like a musical instrument, on which users discover their own
memorizable paths in the network of commands and published pieces. As users grow their code and media literacy
through play and exploration, they are able to improvise, recombine, and expand their performable repertoire
with the computer.
Every software piece on Aesthetic Computer is its own addressable doorway to the larger system. Most new users
enter through built-in pieces like notepat
or those published by user handles like
@bash/hub
* where no further onboarding or downloading of specific client software is required to
fully experience them. We connect online through chat
and play in-person by prefixing any piece
with share
.
Commercial components in the AC stack include support for priced ticketing of pieces like botce
,
mail ordering user media customized physical items like stickers through the print
command and monthly subscription based network services like on sotce-net
.
*@bash/hub
piece by rackodo
on GitHub.
Technical Progress
Today Aesthetic Computer maintains a growing library of 250+ runtime
API commands in docs
for JavaScript programmers and a built-in list
of
150+ pieces
and commands for entering into prompt
. Users can enter list
commands to play games
together, interact with LLM characters, or learn musical instruments.
Platform and piece development takes place from within the AC VS
Code Extension
which saw its first college level
use with students at UCLA this year.
This winter I worked on a programming language designed especially for AC called Kid Lisp which I will build a mobile friendly
graphic editor for in 2025. Simple expressions like (wipe gray) (ink red) (write (* 2 3 4))
now evaluate to full pieces when entered into
prompt
. Using the .lisp
extension is supported when publishing by drag
and drop or in VS Code.
Chat
released in the spring and has since grown a scene of
daily users who exchange technical help and immediate bug reports. I personally keep up
with chat
by using the native notifications in the AC
iOS App.
This summer I designed the notepat
keyboard instrument, made refinements to
metronome
, tone
, bleep
and added automixing and additional wavetypes to
the sound system.
You can prefix these pieces with source
in prompt
to view their code
and roadmap.
Project progress and upcoming plans can be found in the repository's README.md file and live platform statistics are
below in the AC Report Card.
Interested Investors
Aesthetic Inc. is actively seeking seed investment. Please reach out at
[email protected]
for a detailed offer letter or book a demo and say
"hi" in chat
to learn more.