Left: Messenger (detail) - David Szafranski & Right: Invader Fractal- Jared Tarbell

David Szafranski makes paintings of a procedural nature recalling the textures and patterns of nature, more specifically cell biology and the rhizomatic mappings of plant growth. The painting Human_robot, for example, has a kind of root system with space-filling properties and the title implies the kind of robotic repetitive action which would be required to make such a work. It’s the human equivalent of a Diffusion Aggregation Limitation system - whereby particles in solution diffuse randomly until they move near to a piece of solid structure, at which point they come out of solution and form part of the aggregate resulting in dendritic structures. All of the works have a similar quality and evoke the idea of the human-computer in repetitive sub-routines crystallizing the work into existence.

Kuja rightly points out the connection between Captain_Freedom and the cellular oscillations of Eden, a large-scale installation piece by John McCormack dealing with a computational ecology currently on view at Art.ficial 3.0 (See previous post).

Messenger sees the human computer map out the surface of a cell-colony with degrees of order and randomness.

All of the works display space-filling properties -a side effect of the adventures of growth in natural systems. There are a whole family of space-filling curves in Math, including the Dragon and Hilbert Curve’s both of which are derived from L-system expansion. Compare again Szafranski’s Captain_Freedom and iterations of the Dragon curve to see the computed connectedness.

Space-fill is literally taken to another dimension with Daniel Erdely’s Spidron System, where alternating sequences of isosceles triangles applied to polyhedra in a particular folded arrangement exhibit specific spatial properties – an exotic 3d space-fill.

‘The Emotion Fractal is a recursive space filling algorithm using English words describing the human condition.’ Jared Tarbell’s piece nicely combines an element of narrative using a predefined set of English words with a recursive sub-divisioning process, and as he say’s ‘Continual variations on this theme took me to some weird places’ as the ‘Emotion Fractal tells a winding tale of human experience personal to each observer’. See also his ‘Invader Fractal’.

Click here for another article on procedural/process art

Left: Dog [LAB]01 - France Cadet & Right: Neon Organic - Marius Watz

Back into the loop finally after a few weeks in wonderful São Paulo, Brazil. I’ve had an excellent time with the curators and production crew of Art.ficial 3.0 as well as many artists who took part in the show together with the speakers involved in the connected symposium.

I’ve finally relented and opened a flickr account and my first batch of photos of the show is up for viewing. The ever-industrious Marius Watz has of course already done the same with this great set.

The exhibition brought together an exciting group of works with impressive variety that all explored in some way elements of cybernetics, interaction and interface. Many of the works could be seen classic’s in the field, take Golan Levin’s and Zachary Liebermans installation version of ‘Messe de Voce’ for example where speech, shouts and songs produced by participants of the work are augmented in real-time by custom interactive visualization software.

Alongside the exhibition ran a symposium of talks by international guests (artists & scientists) on such topics as interface science, cybernetics and computational art and their inter-relationships. Specific information can be found here.

It is of course worth noting the theme of art & cybernetics has fertile history. In 1968 Jasia Reichardt, Assistant Director of the ICA, curated the now seminal show of tech/computer art, Cybernetic Serendipity. Jaisa was invited to talk at the symposium giving a compelling account of history of computer/machine art and some great insider info on the Cybernetic Serendipity show itself.

I was fortunate enough to travel back to London with Jaisa and Otto Rössler (who gave a talk on Endophysics) and so took the opportunity to interrogate them for some more details bout their work.

My piece for the show, Talysis 2, utilises video feedback as a generative principle. The recursive properties of video feedback allow for complex symmetrical geometric forms to evolve in real-time as the system interfaces with itself – The software used was the excellent VVVV. I will post more documentation on this piece sometime in the near future.

São Paulo from above and below

São Paulo is a fantastic city with a special thing going on - a mega-city rated among the largest few on the planet. From 20 floors up its possible to view its amazing expanse in every direction – a crystalline sprawl of hi-rise buildings throw up an endless carpet of fascinating geometries.

Thanks to the Itua Crew - Marcos, Kuja, Sofia, Guilherme, Ricardo, Vini, and Marcel for making my time in Brazil such a great and memorable one!

Dataisnature transmissions will now resume their normal frequency.

Dataisnature heads off to São Paulo , Brazil to show a piece at Emoção Art.ficial 3.0.

Embracing themes of interfacing and cybernetics, all the works at the show will ‘embody concepts which are important to cybernetics, such as feedback, communication, causality, information, observation, predictability and equilibrium.

Régine over at WMMNA presents a nice interview with Guilherme Kujawski, co-curator of Art.ficial 3.0, who reveals some interesting thoughts about cybernetic systems in relation to the pieces in the show.

Art.ficial 3.0 also includes a set of roundtables and lectures (with artists and scientists) that take place on July 19, 20 and 21, in São Paulo , Brazil.

Pixel Maelstrom - Philip Stearns

Busy, Busy….

The TI99 is a “vintage” home computer system from 1981 made by Texas Instruments. Philip Stearns has been bending its circuits to make a real-time audio responsive glitch machine - the Pixel Maelstrom. Maybe you want to try? Check out this page for advice on how to start circuit bending with toy musical instruments using bluetack!

Over at the always inspiring Bldgblog we hear of the Earth-Surface-Machine, ‘an interactive geotextile that could be used for reinforcing landscapes and buildings of the future’.

Obselete presents 120 years of Electronic Musical Instruments. Who wouln’t enjoy curiosities such as the Optophonic Piano ? - a device that generated sounds and projected revolving patterns onto a wall by directing a bright light through a series revolving painted glass, filters, mirrors and lenses.

Marius leads us to the work of Simon Elvins and his exploration into sound, print and notation. Then rebounds with a link to some exquisite musical notation presented at Biblioodyssey. Dataisnature has touched on this theme before in a little less detail.

Sanch, the chief experimenter at Meso now has a blog documenting the fantastic forms he creates using VVVV! (see previous posts on the Superformula).

Splitscreen is a blog dedicated to split, composite and multi-screen visuals.

Well, back from Decibelio and an extended stay in Madrid with some days spent in lovely Toledo. At Decebelio Olli and I represented the real-time sound responsive school of Vjing, with Olli performing a scorching set of live improvisation to the incredible Pan Sonic – our tools: Proce55ing and VVVV (pictures to come soon). Decibelio takes it visual art seriously, both digital and non-digital – the visuals to each musical act being seen as important as the music and integral to the experience. For me it was great to work with Orphx and it turns out we have a lot of common threads running through our work, feedback systems, cybernetics, emergence through sound visualisation and so on -expect a collaboration soon.

A big thanks goes out to Delacrew, the visuals crew from Barcelona who organised the VJ area/stage at Decibelio. Delacrew do a lot of interesting work with PureData, including their bespoke open source VJ tool, Eve. Also shouts go out to all the other Vj crews from Spain that we met at Decibelio – Telenoika, Lektrovision, Videotone and Waskman – Those guys really know how to flip the T-bar on the V4!

Expect a write up of some of the installation artwork at Decibelio sometime soon.