Art
July 20, 2005
Napier at Bitforms Gallery, NYC
Entry posted by Mark at July 20, 2005 03:06 PM
This fall I will have a one-man show at Bitforms Gallery. I'll be showing a new body of interactive digital artwork from a series that has come to be known as "The Fall of Rome, Part II".
October 20 through November 26
Bitforms Gallery
529 West 20th St, 2nd Floor
New York, NY
USA
May 05, 2005
an escape from emotion
Entry posted by Mark at May 5, 2005 11:30 PM
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion;"
T. S. Eliot
I remember painting as a form of exorcism, an image stuck in my mind, trying to get it out. Only when the image (the feel, the quality, the nuance, the idea) was made tangible in the world, on the canvas, then I could sleep soundly.
That's why craft is so important in painting. The body must be trained to the point that it does what has to be done, to perform the right motions, so the image can be exorcised from the mind, without the limitations of the hand, arm, body getting in the way.
In software it is the same (I believe in all art it is this way). The artist must know his craft and excel at it, so that the craft does not get in the way of the intention. The craft must enable the intention. Then the vision in the mind can be actualized in the world, and with that, escape is possible.
April 17, 2005
Still Images from KingKong3-Line
Entry posted by Mark at April 17, 2005 10:30 PM
New stills from the latest in the KingKong3 series.
These are still images taken from an interactive artwork, created using my Java and OpenGL code . I'm working on getting these pieces out into the world as installations. More to come on that later...
March 20, 2005
Beautiful Biomorphic Forms from Ira Greenberg
Entry posted by Mark at March 20, 2005 11:57 AM
Ira Greenberg creates these Protobytes by combining spiral algorithms.
He builds on a simple formula to create complex yet elegant results. In these pieces he turns a corner, from the work being about the algorithm to it being about the aesthetic possibilities of that algorithm. In his own words:
"I then begin combining expressions into long, dense and incomprehensible expression strings that are outside predictable bounds (at least to me.) At this point, my decision making process moves from an analytical approach to one that is aesthetically driven"
Protobytes
January 30, 2005
Painterly new work by Camille Utterback
Entry posted by Mark at January 30, 2005 06:02 PM
Camille showed this recent artwork "Untitled 5" during the Upgrade event in January. What's immediately impressive about this work is the painterly quality it generates. It breaks from the technological look that dominates so much digital artwork. She talked about how much more visual the process is for making this kind of piece, how she takes screenshots along the way to record ideas as she's developing the algorithms. She likened the process to sketching, with the screenshots working as a visual record and also as reference notes.
Art on the web has been dominated by conceptual art for years. The low resolution and variable nature of the web and of software/digital art in general has made the message the medium: net art is "read" more than seen. The experience of the work is tied to the conceptual manipulation of the work: what actions can the viewer take and what are the results. The concept can propagate in text and by word of mouth, much faster than the artwork itself, which means also that, like fast food, the concept can be rapidly consumed and leave the consumer hungry for the next. Ideas transmit quickly, are consumed quickly and grow old quickly. Since the idea travels in our heads and conversations, there's not much need to return to the art.
As multi-media computers propagate into the mainstream, graphics cards drop in cost and bandwidth increases, hi-resolution artwork returns and with it the possibility of work that has a conceptual underpinning, uses interaction and is also richly visual.
In Camille's Untitled 5, the interaction of many people over time generates a beautiful design that is the result of many motions in the space, and many people moving. It is not just a conceptual recording or interpreting of motion; the work responds to overlapping motion with a subtle and surprising vocabulary of shapes and colors, enticing the viewer to explore the possibilities of the artwork. There is poetry to this idea that is fittingly expressed in the abstract-expressionist and calligraphic qualities that the work generates. The viewer becomes an agent in an ongoing creative process.
The visual can't be adequately described in words. It must be seen. This return to the senses takes digital art to the next level of aesthetic potential.
January 27, 2005
Quark -- Studies in Color and Motion
Entry posted by Mark at January 27, 2005 01:11 PM
I have posted screenshots from a generative piece I've worked on over the past two years. The piece is titled "Quark" after the physics particle by the same name.
In particle physics, the quark is considered a fundamental particle, a building block of the larger particles, such as protons and neutrons, that make up all matter. Three "strong charges" are associated with quarks and are labeled by physicists with the colors red, green and blue, in analogy with the three primary colours, red, green and blue that make white light.
The story goes that Murray Gell-Mann (the physicist who discovered quarks) took the name "quark" from a line in James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake': "three quarks for Muster Mark". The line suggested the name to the physicist because the quarks appeared in sets of three within protons.
In these pieces the chaotic motion of three particles generate red, green and blue values. The motion of the particles translates into shifting colors and over time creates a varied space filled with spiralling forms. These images are from four versions of Quark, each with a different tuning to the motion and color values.
The Quark series is based on code from to the physics engine in this demo
Special thanks to Creative Capital and the Alternative Museum for funding that led to the development of these pieces, and to Josh Nimoy for the OpenGL kick-start.
December 12, 2004
Organic Algorithms
Entry posted by Mark at December 12, 2004 08:57 PM
Jared Tarbell's digital art combines the mindless repetition of computer programs with the creative expressiveness of natural growth. From this seemingly contradictory match he generates a bewildering array of delightfully intimate forms. In a grid of 88 "sand dollars", each algorithmically generated design is approximately the same size and shape as the others, yet each is distinct and uniquely engaging. The surface monotony of the grid gives way to organic delicacy.
Complexification | Gallery of Computation by Jared Tarbell
November 09, 2004
King Kong Revisited
Entry posted by Mark at November 9, 2004 01:49 PM
About two years ago I made this simulation that uses some physics trickery to create a springy Empire State Building-ish sort of thing that you can toss around, squash and just generally destroy with no lasting guilt.
http://www.potatoland.org/solid/kingkong
I pursued this further in Java, using a fully 3D space and translucent drawing to get a spatially deeper and smokier effect, and rapidly hit the limit on how fast Java could render. This is the piece that convinced me that I had to learn lower level techniques to get the results I wanted:
The latest in the series puts a "skin" on the wireframe model of the building. These screenshots span several minutes of interaction with the piece.
http://potatoland.com/kk2/kk3_1