Jean Pierre Herbert

Sand Apparatus

Sand Apparatus is a kinetic device (much like a plotter) used for making artwork which involves sand on a constructed, wood platform with a magnet underneath, and a metal ball. This piece maintains the zen of a Japanese garden by introducing this ball in a non-obtrusive manner, completely void of anything mechanical to the viewer. The process is magical, and the lightness and form of sand provides the “blotter drawing” with a more spacial approach.

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Roman Verostko

Diamond Lake Apocalypse

Diamond Lake Apocalypse is presented as an open book, embodying the idea of a precious object filled with algorithmic, blotted drawings. The artist means for the book to take on the character of an illuminated manuscript, with each page carefully constructed by the artist as though he were a monk. The patterns and colours are mesmerizing, and the layout of the pages speaks in more in an alien language of words and symbols rather than just an image.

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Giuseppe Randazzo

Stone Fields

Stone Fields is a computational project, coded in a C++ console application that outputs a OBJ 3d file, where virtual stones are created from several fractal subdivision categories. These imagined landscapes come across as actual stones at first glance, and there becomes this play between nature and the sterility of the virtual. It is like a mental, non-physical ordering and manipulating of the gravel below a park bench, something done very much so unintentionally and out of involuntary need.

 

 

 

John Whitney “Catalog” 1961

This is a video made by a “pioneer of digital art”, John Whitney. While looking outwards this evening I found John Whitney and remembered being introduced to him by Suzie Silver. She excitedly explained his harmonic genius nicely. John Whitney founded a production studio that  used a mechanical analogue computer of his own invention to create motion picture. Not very exciting, but for work done in the 60s I find the etherial quality of his work to be captivating. His use of digital media in art was one that was so new and unique he’s remembered still. 

http://www.generatorx.no/20101213/abstrakt-abstrakt-softlab/#more-751

Using gravity to effect its physical form and hanging like a droopy skin in the space between the staircase of the Frankfurter Kunstverein the “(n)arcissus)” exists. This installation piece was designed by Gabriel Esquivel & David Hernandez. They designed the form as a parametric model SOFTlab are able to manipulate the formal qualities of the final output while simultaneously optimizing it for physical construction. I chose to share this project because I think it really opened my mind to the possibilities of generative systems as an architectural aid. The crazy things that will be built!

https://vimeo.com/79308949

Memo Akten’s “Reducible”,to me, is a prime example of Aktens taste in minimal shapes and colors combined with extreme detail! The system of this video is comprised of simple channels of data that together amount to this level of complexity. I really like this artists videos, I think they tie together well with Whitney’s work and wanted to post this one too. Harmony in a chaos of simple shapes.

http://butdoesitfloat.com/Does-the-flap-of-a-butterfly-s-wings-in-Brazil-set-off-a-tornado-in

Attractors by Andreia Gil

This project is pretty. the end. I actually have no clue how this stuff is made but it looks cool! Like that pen circle gear thing that I can’t remember the name of. Im sorry I don’t have much more to say about this other than I think it looks interesting.

 

http://butdoesitfloat.com/Chaos-refers-to-a-kind-of-constrained-randomness-Wherever-a-chaotic

Fractal renders: RoddH and Fractal Lab (by Tom Beddard)

ditto ^

 

http://butdoesitfloat.com/A-specter-haunts-the-world-and-it-is-the-specter-of-migration

beautiful organic images

Generative drawings by Eno Henze

Title: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

IVY

What interested me about this project was the fact that it actually had a person getting involved in it rather than the computer doing all the work. It seemed as if this project was somewhere between the generative artwork and conditional design, since the conditions were given but it was the people who were carrying it out rather than a computer. Also it was more viewer friendly since it was something that could be used as a coat hanger and seen in our daily life rather than an computational artwork that would be unfamiliar to most of people.

http://www.ivy.mos-office.net/

 

Zach Lieberman – Drawn: The installation

this work interacts with the person and also happens by chance. It depends on what the interacting person does to the screen. It accumulates on the screen letting people interact with others through the screen too. I couldn’t find the code to the program and I have no idea whether the programing is sophisticated right now but it is playful and poetic for the performer to play and interact with.

https://vimeo.com/44601359

http://www.generatorx.no/20060417/zach-lieberman-drawn-the-installation/

 

Jonathan McCabe

He experiments with natural geometric pattern and their application to computer art and design. His latest work which was The Origami Butterfly had interested me since his technique was so original but at the same time I thought it had originated from the nature itself. Nature is sometimes is unexpected but most of the time, I guess, is mathematical. Also his works remind me of the kids who would fold paper and cut them into different shapes without knowing how the paper will turn out when it is opened. This way of making pattern is familiar and at the same time has a beautiful aesthetic to it.

http://www.generatorx.no/category/generative-art/page/7/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanmccabe/sets

http://jonathanmccabe.com/

A House of Dust – Alison Knowles and James Tenney (1967)

A house of dust
on open ground
lit by natural light
inhabited by friends and enemies

Knowles’ House of Dust is one of the first and, in my opinion, best forays into the art of generative poetry. It’s relatively simple, consisting of four-line stanzas (as above), each describing a house. Programmed on a Siemens 4004, the piece seems very lonely, distanced from all these houses and stories by the office paper and exact descriptions. It also does an excellent job of raising the simple question of what poetry is. Personally, I’m still uncertain whether this is poetry or not. For all its strength, it is quite primitive, and I’d like to see some more complexity in this kind of work, although it risks losing that distinctly robotic aspect. Knowles was a strong member of New York’s art community during the 60s, and was clearly influenced by the questioning approach to art that her peers, which included Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, took.

Rain – LIA (2012)

Rain is a surprisingly blunt piece of interactive art. It consists of a screen and a set of controls that dictate what kind of form is generated on said screen. Aside from the beauty of the made forms, I like this piece for its strange position as both art and tool. The contents of the screen can be printed, and these prints are sold as separate artworks. This makes the piece a fully realised tool for creative expression; it calls for both appreciation and mastery.  I think it would be interesting to see this piece fused with a printer, creating one autonomous creative tool.

Light Echoes – Aaron Koblin and Ben Tickleback (2013)

Light Echoes from ben tricklebank on Vimeo.

Light Echoes is one of those technically wonderful pieces that seem to lack some conceptual direction. The piece is based on a projector mounted to a moving train, projecting onto the rails below. The footage of this is then composited into images with the full light coverage of the rails, which completely transform the space presented. As well as the aforementioned lack of focus I also have to say that I don’ve enjoy the editing style used for the documentation video.

Daniel Zeller

“Enforced Toxification” 2008, Ink and Acrylic on Paper “Internalized Wobularity” 2010, Ink, Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper,

Daniel Zeller only loosely fits within the category of Generative Art, but I feel that his work is an outstanding example of successful use of modular aesthetic style. Zeller only uses three or four shapes in his pieces, which he repeats with different parameters to create larger, emergent constructs. Despite his strict adherence to an aesthetic system, Zeller never plans any of his work beforehand, and simply improvises with flawless penmanship as he goes along. I respect both his methodical approach as well as his diligence in implementing an artistic process which leaves no margin for error.

Karl Sims

I focused specifically on Karl Sims’s 1994 project, “Evolving Virtual Creatures”. Sims randomly generated moving “creatures” within a simulated physics environment. Using an arbitrary fitness measure, such as ability to move through water, or walk on land, Sims’s genetic algorithms would select only the most successful generated creatures, and create a new generation of creatures using their genetic information. Not only was I born in 1994, but I also am intensely interested in genetic algorithms and self-improving programs, so this project has provided me with an aesthetically pleasing (albeit spastic) benchmark as to the state such of technologies at the beginning of my life.

Casey Reas

“Substrate” 2013, Laser etched anodized aluminum

Casey Reas’s 2013 project Substrate is a great example of re purposing utilitarian input for generative art. Reas etched television signals into anodized aluminum, creating surreal visual landscapes which assume three dimensional geometric qualities. I like the landscapes my mind constructs (reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics terrain) from data that was never meant to be spatially interpreted in the first place.

“10 minuets of cold” is a image and a music piece by Jamy Sheirdan and John Dunn. In this project the image is used as score to make the music (click to listen to the music). The image is made using slit-scan photography (or what looks like slit-scan, there is no description on the work). The width is about 1000 pixels long when the height is 500 pixels. So, like reading music, the picture is read from left to right. Here is the full picture. I really feel like this project missed an opportunity because it is poorly documented. I really had to dig to find this project, not that I was looking for it. The artist interested me because of his essay that argues that cyberspace is a sub-class of space itself, and having that in mind changes the piece for me.

“Matter” by Quayola is a computer generated short film where blocks of geometric shapes are chiseled down to reveal an iconic sculpture, Rodin’s The Thinker. That subject was a nice choice, being that it was considered the bridge between classical and modern sculpture. The piece has the figure emerge and submerge slowly, bobbing back and forth, like it is stuck between two worlds.

Casey Reas made a very smart simple comparison between the artist who uses different materials like, leather, honey, blood, oil, steel, felt and so on, and the artist using software has different materials to work with like Java, c, c++, Python, PHP ect. Having that in mind, the Recode project (initiated by Matt Epler) had a different meaning. Its not just copying some work that was already done, each re-creation is its own unique piece, because it was done in a completely different material. Like the difference between a copy of a Mona Lisa painting and Andy Warhol’s Mona Lisa. That was my own little revelation. One of my favorites from the transcribed gallery was “Kube Series” by Mary Scahill based of of “Kube Series” by Klaus Basset.

Recently I’ve been interested in programs as tools for new ways of drawing and mark making, so for this Looking Outwards, I’ve specifically researched experimental drawing applications created with Processing.

The Sonic Wire Sculptor Machine is a program that adds two more dimensions to drawing. Marks made are converted to 3D models and spun in three dimensions, and tones are derived from the positions and shapes of the marks. I was impressed by this project because it’s very successful in creating a fascinating new way of drawing and experiencing a drawing. It seems like there are many possibilities for this project. I can imagine complex improvisational drawing/music hybrid performances that could be done by mastering this software.

The Stone Spray Project is a machine which allows the user to draw in the same way a 3D printer “draws” by using several 2D layers. It’s a surprising project because the technique of using a pen or stylus to build up a sculpture (as opposed to the process of removing in sculpture) is relatively new. The only other way I am aware of playing with this technique is with a 3D printer pen which have only recently (in the past few years) entered the consumer market.

Chronodraw is another drawing software experiment where the user can draw frame by frame into cells that can be tiled together. The effects that can be created are similar to particle systems that use flocking algorithms. The issue here is that the drawing application itself is very limited; the tools are very basic (a simple non-anti-aliased “pencil” tool that doesn’t support tablets with pressure sensitivity) and users can only use white on a black background. If this project was instead some sort of plugin or addon to software with a more complete drawing system (gimp, Photoshop, etc.) then there would be much more flexibility on what is possible with Chronodraw.

This weeks theme was processing.  My prior knowledge of this word was that all types of computers had to using something called processing in order to run functional programs and other software.  I apologize for my complete ignorance of computing language.  Therefore, after learning that Processing is a software toolkit and sketchpad for computer arts, this theme became less overwhelming. After browsing The Processing Exhibition website, I discover Body Navigation 2008 by Jonas Jongejan, Tina Tarpgaard, Digital Natives 2012 by Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, and Strata #3 2009 by Quayola.

I admired by Strata #3 because it was able to successfully combine GENERATIONS of art history into one piece.  It used contemporary practices to digitized classical paintings and architecture in surrealist, impressionistic, and modernist ways.  I would argue that it is an example of all of art history combined into one piece.

I was surprised by Body Navigation because it seemed to be just one big video game to me.  So it touched up the interaction between perfumer and computer but thats pretty much the basis for all digital art.  There was nothing truly unique about this piece to me.

Finally, I think that Digital Natives was a piece that was good but could have gone further.  The forms of the 3D printed objects were aesthetically appealing but I think that the contact of the types of objects that were selected could have been discussed in-depth more.