Looking Outwards – More Generative and Interactive Works
William Latham’s “Mutator 1” and “Mutator 2” have created 3-dimensional evolving images since the late 1980’s. I was skimming through Latham’s Website and noticed this small treasure trove of mutated images. The fact that these were all (with a hum push) evolved out of previous generations of images is fascinating to me because it requires user interaction in order to generate more and more possibilities. Here is one of Latham’s “favorite” (so I read) mutations:
If it is not obvious by my last few posts, evolutionary generative imagery which requires viewer interaction to succeed is one of my favorite areas I have come across. Karl Sims’ “Genetic Images” is an installation which allows viewers to help guide the evolutionary process of an image creation software in order to actually dictate future generations of still imagery. This combination of interactivity and artist’s vision is one of my favorite mixtures and I can’t get enough of projects similar to these. Here are a few “generations” which Sim’s program and it’s users produced:
When Looking for my third piece for this looking outwards I came across the website of Jared Tarbell. What struck me about his site was not the wealth of computationally generated art, but this small widget above his home screen. It begged to be played with. I couldn’t help but sit down and just screw around with it for five minutes.
I didn’t even have to know what this was or have it advertised to me for it to have such a strong effect on my desire to interact. Tarbell’s ability to just place a small widget on his website and incite interaction is fascinating to me and is a skill which I wish to obtain. After poking around his website I also found a few more projects which involve these little interactive balls.
They kept me quite entertained.