Mitchell Whitelaw, #climatedata proposal (2009)

One of the most articulate and accessible voices within the generative art scene is undoubtedly the Canberra-based scholar/practitioner Mitchell Whitelaw. Given his relative (internet) silence over the last year, news of an interview—conducted by Paul Prudence, no less—published in the most recent issue of Neural magazine, is cause for minor celebration. Mitchell posted the transcript of this conversation to his blog last night and it is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the opening response about the utopian nature of software art acknowledges some ideological underpinnings that are seldom discussed – and Paul’s query as to “where is the dystopian software art?” is both provocative and on point. Secondly, the comments about look vs. process and how even the glossiest eye candy often embodies a “narrative of systems” is a useful means of considering the ‘performative’ capabilities of generative art. Finally, Mitchell’s description of algorithm popularity as ‘a memetic ecology unto itself’ is exactly the kind of meta-commentary that is desperately needed in (generally) uncritical software art circles.

A particularly sharp passage on system design and pedagogy:

The link there for me is a sense of “procedurality” or “processuality”. In Casey Reas’ work we can see a strong relationship between computational and non-computational procedures such as those of Sol LeWitt. In teaching programming to designers, I have students write and execute a LeWitt style procedure, with pencil and paper. Digital generative systems are just formal procedures, executed by machines. Treating processes as human-executable helps unpack the black boxes of generative systems mentioned earlier, and hopefully reveal them as contingent and hackable.

This notion of “human executable” procedures is a handy frame of reference in introducing agency into system design…

Otherwise: the joy of materiality. Generative art and design covets the lush tangibility of traditional media; and with the wave of interest in fabrication we are seeing ever more generative work realised in “off-screen” forms. The challenge then, for pasty code-artist types, is to match the craft skills of hands-on makers in realising the work.

…and serves as a perfect segue into Mitchell’s thinking about transmateriality (craft/making/material culture). Read the full conversation between Mitchell and Paul here.

The agency Scholz & Volkmer developed a new product presentation for the world wide relaunch of the Montblanc website. For each product line a generative artist was invited to develop a flexible and unique artwork, which provides the masterpieces with an appropriate presentation stage. In addition to other artists, such as Onformative and Anthony Mattox, who were developing artworks for the brand’s watches and perfume lines, Marius Watz was invited to develop their interpretation of an artwork for the product category “eyewear”.

Continue reading.... Montblanc by Marius Watz [Processing]

What is a truly realistic portrait? This question inspired a project about going beyond physical appearances and attempting to render the interior world of a human being, through memories, emotions, relationships and personal story.

These are the questions that concern Sergio Albiac, which he attempts to answer in his latest project “Videorative Portrait of Randall Okita”. A progression from “Content is Queen: a generative video painting”, like it’s predecessor, it paints a Videorative portrait (a generative, narrative and interactive video portrait). The software starts with collecting personal videos of the person portrayed, tagged by him/her with relevant concepts and descriptions. Then, using the Processing application, the user “paints with meanings” and generates a video portrait, subtitled with generative personal narratives.

Continue reading.... Videorative Portrait of Randall Okita [Processing]

Whilst we are pretty much all aware of the implications of 3-D printing as a process of making any arbitrary object at the push of a button, it is exactly what living organisms have been up to since the invention of multicellular life.

Designers at IDEO have teamed up with scientists at the Lim Lab at the University of California, San Francisco to envision a “provocation” (that’s designer-ese for thought experiment) in which they explore the possibilities of exploiting known properties of microorganisms to literally “grow” the products we use every day.

What is particularly interesting about these future scenarios is where we once thought about computer systems that evolve through immense network of both physical and conceptual parameters, where one influence the other as in the case of Nervous System’s process of “growing objects”, the process of printing may eventually evolve into processes of actual physical growing. These two systems, of digital creation and of the biological one may eventually merge, creating an ecology of both digital and physical networks that communicate and feed of one another.

“One day if we understand how to program [living organisms,] we can encode things beyond software–we could encode materiality” says Carey. “That’s already happening in nature, but we have no idea how to do that ourselves.”

Time to move away from mimicry?

Read more on Fast Company >Training Bacteria To Grow Consumer Goods

More on this topic at syntheticaesthetics.org

The video below, created by Lasal, shows a short part of a new installation which explores the relationship between 2 Harmonic waves in different graphical/musical ways. The piece includes 98 pair of points trigger notes depending on the collision position in the Y axis and panning depends on the X position. The phase and velocity of booth waves are synchronised to collide in a harmonic chord.

Continue reading.... Harmophon [vvvv, Sound]

Designed by Katharina Hölzl, the following are very special business cards for Ritornell, experimental music duo. The cards were inspired by the project’s live show where Ritornell invited the audience to bring along their private musicboxes. With the aid of laser cutter, nine micro compositions consisting of circles, triangles and Ritornell’s contact information were cut onto a long musicbox paper stripe.

Continue reading.... Ritornell for Musicbox [Objects, Sound]

The agency Scholz & Volkmer developed a new product presentation for the world wide relaunch of the Montblanc website. For each product line a generative artist was invited to develop a flexible and unique artwork, which provides the masterpieces with an appropriate presentation stage. In addition to other artists, such as Marius Watz and Anthony Mattox, who are developing artworks for the brand’s sunglass and perfume lines, Onformative were invited to develop their interpretation of an artwork for the product category watches.

Continue reading.... Montblanc by Onformative [Processing]

“Someone” pointed out recently that we have never blogged Marius Watz. Although referred to in a number of posts and having blogged himself on CAN here, Marius is one of those people that doesn’t need special mentioning. He has exhibited worldwide, spoke at many events and conferences and continues to influence status and direction of generative art. Here we have collected few recent and not so recent works; his ElectroPlastique, a time-based visual homage to the Op artist Victor Vasarely, and his talk from the Eyeo Festival earlier this year.

ElectroPlastique, also know as ”Grid distortion” are grids distorted through a gradual transformation, causing lines to crack and bend. Under pressure, two two dimensions become three, the lattice looking like bubbles as they emerge towards the viewer. There have been a number of iterations of the work, ElectroPlastique #1 [2005], Grid distortion (2008), EXTRUSION (2011) and most recently ElectroPlastique #1 as seen on Vimeo and exhibited at the San Francisco Film Society.

Continue reading.... ElectroPlastique and Grid Distortions [Processing]

“Égrégore” means an energy produced by the desires of many individuals in a common goal. This is the starting point of this audiovisual performance that aims to exploit the group movement phenomenas. Complex and expressive behaviors are generated and controlled by a computer and transcribed in sound and image. A crowd of particles deploys itself, reorganizes, blends into living structures more or less coherent, evolving from a chaotic movement toward a cohesive group. This project is a continuation of chdh’s work on audiovisual instruments, but aims to radicalize the search”

Continue reading.... egregore [Pure Data, Sound]

]]> http://www.creativeapplications.net/sound/egregore-pure-data-sound/feed/ 0 http://www.creativeapplications.net/mac/textoy-mac-windows-cinder/ http://www.creativeapplications.net/mac/textoy-mac-windows-cinder/#comments Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:04:31 +0000 Filip http://www.creativeapplications.net/?p=19347

Textoy is a cinder app by Ariel Malka that is all about physical interaction with text and a slight touch of generative sound. Latest work in progress in the series of projects exploring interactive text and typeface, in this latest experiment Ariel has created an app that allows you to draw a curve along which custom text follows. The iPad version is to be multi-touch, use the accelerometer and allow you to enter your own text.

Meanwhile, Ariel has made a version for the desktop:
- Turn on your speakers
- You can press the enter key to clear the current curve
- Then, just draw a new curve with the mouse…

Continue reading.... Textoy [Mac, Windows, Cinder]

]]> http://www.creativeapplications.net/mac/textoy-mac-windows-cinder/feed/ 0