the meaty bits

OK, I’ve finished watching the Paul Prudence video clips. Cut to the chase: if you want to see his visual recursive programme in action, watch parts 8 and 11. In terms of abstract experimental animation, it’s vaguely reminiscent of Oskar Fischinger’s work, but it concentrates on repetition and multiplication rather than colour and fast change. So – not really like it at all, then.

For me, the highlight of Paul’s presentation was this definition:

recursion n. If you still don’t get it, see recursion.

expanded computing

Continuing yesterday’s theme about digital art comes a timely post from (the teeming void) about…well, it’s ultimately about the links between analogue and digital, and expanding computers through tinkering with the hardware and tapping into analogue sources – the flux of the material field. (Such a beautiful phrase.) I particularly like The Idea of a Tree, which seems to be an embodiment of its surroundings, taking Andy Goldsworthy’s approach to outdoor sculpture to the next stage. In a very small way, it ties in neatly with my first faltering steps with Arduino – last night I hooked up my new Duemilanova board to my iMac for the very first time.

(the teeming void) is subtitled ‘generative and data aesthetics’. It’s written by Mitchell Whitelaw, who wrote Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, a fascinating book that was one of the initial prompts, when I started to learn Processing last year, to push my limited skills with the language so I could use it to create something generative. I haven’t reached that point yet, but I’m getting there, and Arduino is one more step on the way.

That world out there is smaller, but more densely packed, than I realised.

there’s a whole world out there

In posting every stage of progress in my Processing sketches recently, I seem to have lost sight of what’s going on elsewhere on the web. As an antidote (yes, the use of the medical term is deliberate), I’ve been researching current and recent examples of digital art.

There’s the forthcoming Futuresonic festival in Manchester from 13 to 16 May 2009, which I plan to visit. Michael Takeo‘s website claims he currently has an installation called Data_sea at Birmingham’s Thinktank, but there’s no mention of it on the Thinktank website. On Everything by Pall Thayer, created with Processing in 2006, indiscriminately draws random material from blogs at blogger.com and images on Flickr. There’s also a lot of interesting material to be found at Furtherfield.

Via Vague Terrain, I’ve discovered Paul Prudence and his dataisnature blog, which has vast quantities of fascinating stuff, particularly generative art. Amongst other work, Paul contributed to Flash Math Creativity. Also via Vague Terrain, I came across Node 08: Forum for Digital Artists, which took place in Franfurt last year, largely using vvvv. You can see some videos of lectures at Node 08 on Vimeo, including an interesting but dry and formal (and incomplete) lecture by Casey Reas (of Processing fame) on the role of software in the visual arts, and the aforementioned Paul Prudence talking about visual music.

There is a fundamental problem with lectures by people who are not polished public speakers which is compounded when they’re filmed, but at least when watching them on the web you can pause as often as you want or need, and the content rewards perseverence (perhaps that should be ‘endurance’).