Expressive Computation

Widianto Nugroho is an artist, designer, programmer, researcher, and lecturer. He is primarily interested in computational media, and free/open source software (FOSS), among other things.

In the computational media, he explores methods and tools used in computer science or informatics engineering fields (computation, algorithm, and programming) to address and solve design problems as well as medium of expression with its unique potential. This activity resulted in series of software and generative works[1][2]. He works mainly with Processing[3], an open source programming language and environment to program images, animation, and interactions. He contributes to the Processing project through lectures, workshops[4], and translated the reference of Processing language into Indonesian. Since 2005, at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) as part time faculty member he teaches undergraduate course in digital printmaking, where he spreads the idea of art making with programming.

In the FOSS area, from early 2007, Widianto works as researcher at Microelectronics Center[5] ITB. He is a member of a research group focused on the distribution of freely available FOSS application packages and simple desktop environment that can be run on low-end PC and removable media. This research activity is part of the National Strategic Research on Open Source Software (Riset Unggulan Strategis Nasional, RUSNAS-OSS) program funded by Indonesian Ministry for Research and Technology (RISTEK). Also at the Microelectronics Center he and his colleague develop desktop theme[6] (icon set, desktop background, and login manager) for Gnome[7] desktop that depicts Indonesian culture and tradition. The theme has been released and is currently packaged into BlankOn Linux[8], an Indonesian-flavor Linux distribution.

With the theme development effort, along with lecture and workshop, he aims to promote the adoption of FOSS applications particularly graphics, video, and audio editing software by creative community to meet their professional needs in creative productions. While currently could not be said completely better than that of the proprietary software, with FOSS creative workers running small/medium businesses could get legal software without pay expensive license cost. Beside FOSS adoption by creative community, he also aims to encourage contribution from the creative community back to the open source community. Through the open nature of FOSS development, anyone are allowed to contribute to any FOSS project, including artists and designers. For example, artists and designers can submit their artworks, icons, and themes under the terms of any licenses that conform to the Open Source Definition[9], or simply report usability issue found on the FOSS software. By doing so, the developer are helped to make FOSS software better.

In his other life, Widianto works as web and information system specialist at ITB. He is responsible for leading a team in designing, implementing, and maintaining the daily operation of top-level ITB web site[10]. The web site has won many awards: in 2003, second prize for higher education website from Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information (KOMINFO); in 2005 and 2007, first prize for best university web site from Directorate of Higher Education (DIKTI), Indonesian Ministry of Education (DIKNAS); in 2006, ranks 46 on Webometrics TOP 100 Asian Universities on The Web.

In 1998, located at ITB Library, he and his friends co-found the Knowledge Management Research Group (KMRG). At KMRG he contributed to the development of Ganesha Digital Library (GDL)[11], a web-based digital library software with its core technology of exchanging metadata collections among digital library servers in XML formatted files. It is possible through implementation of Dublin Core metadata standard and Open Archive Initiative (OAI) protocol. Today GDL has been widely used and adopted by many institutions. It has been deployed as main engine in the Indonesian Digital Library Network (IndonesiaDLN) by which its member institutions are able to connect each other and exchange metadata of their digital contents. GDL is released as open source software under GNU/GPL license. With KMRG, he has consulting and working for many clients.

Widianto graduated in from ITB with Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics. After graduated he works in information technology (IT) area for almost ten years. He is currently doing his graduate work in Curriculum Development leading to a Master of Education degree at Indonesia University of Education (UPI) in Bandung Indonesia.

Born in 1972, Widianto lives in Bandung with his wife Aam, his daughter Alia, and his son Ilham. In his spare time, Widianto enjoys hiking, flickring[12], tweeting[13], facebooking[14], and railfaning with his family. As a railfan he loves to see General Electric locomotive in action and hear the sound of its diesel engine.

Links
[1] http://wnugroho.org
[2] http://graphics.itb.ac.id/wnugroho
[3] http://processing.org
[4] http://flickr.com/wnugroho/tags/processing
[5] http://www.paume.itb.ac.id
[6] http://graphics.itb.ac.id/wnugroho/kamonesan
[7] http://www.gnome.org
[8] http://www.blankonlinux.or.id
[9] http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
[10] http://www.itb.ac.id
[11] http://digilib.itb.ac.id
[12] http://flickr.com/wnugroho
[13] http://twitter.com/wnugroho
[14] http://facebook.com/widianto.nugroho