The objectives of the platform
The Raphael platform was designed by artists for artists and creatives, which makes it easier for artists and creative people with no experience in software coding to use digital technologies.
It is designed for real-time applications such as installations, interactive installations, video processing and images created according to the principles of Generative Art. It therefore operates by creating processing flows that are built by the user in a graphic framework.
The network
Artists and creative people do not want to feel limited in their language or in their expressive possibilities. Today, we cannot ignore multidisciplinary approaches that perhaps integrate images, videos, music and sounds, interaction of visitors or performers through various types of sensors or web interactions, interaction with architecture or artificial creatures and/or AI. This cannot be achieved by the work of a few people unless you are a multinational company dedicated to profit.
In our case, we are not and we do not claim to be able to cover every field of expression. For this reason, the platform is designed to be modular so that it can interact with modules created by different artists and creatives. The aim is to create a community that can continuously enrich itself by integrating the work of people who can operate at multiple levels.
In order to foster the development of the community, we created three profiles:
USERS: creatives who use the platform without necessarily having any programming experience or creatives who are committed to developing particular setups or scripts.
DEVELOPERS: creative programmers who want to develop their own modules that can be integrated into the platform flow without requiring extensive knowledge of software. To develop their own modules they use Raphael APIs that greatly simplify software development. They need the APIs as a resource.
SELLERS: creative people and/or programmers who have significant programming experience and want not only to create but also to sell their own modules, whether they are developed with the Raphael APIs or simply have the ability to integrate with the other modules of the platform. As a resource, in addition to the APIs, they need the rules for interfacing between the modules.
The USERS category of community participants already have their own means of expression in the available versions. With the current versions you can work without developing any code, creating composite modules that can be reused in many applications, or you can also write simple but very powerful scripts (in the form of shaders) that can give a strong sense of originality to your work.
We are currently working on the development of APIs to create our own modules for DEVELOPERS partners, which we expect to be able to publish by summer 2025. By the end of the year, we also plan to give the community's developer partners the opportunity to distribute their modules directly from the Raphael website (SELLERS) so that they can offer their work to the entire community that has gathered around this project.