Plate from Geometria – Augustin Hirschvogel [1543]

Dataisnature now has a Facebook stream which includes related supplementary material not included at this blog location. Expect daily links to online documents, journals and papers in PDF format and annotations to items including topics as wide (and connected as) as cybernetic theory, experimental musical notation and early geometry manuscripts, among many others.

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

The following post originally appeared in issue 14 of the online journal, Vague Terrain, in July 2009. For many more recent projects fusing art, architecture and computation, and exploring ‘precise indetermination’ and ‘progressive geometry’ visit Marks site: TheVeryMany.

Using recursive subdivisioning algorithms in Rhinoscript, Marc Forne’s proposition for a Recursive Pavilion has a structure that alludes to leafy foliage. Within a parametric system iterative patterns are generated by applying virtual pressure at the center of individual facets to trigger a cracking process into triangulate faces. The global pattern in this canopy is reflected at smaller intervals, and at lower local scales echoing the fundamental organizing principles in the structures of trees and plants. Being below this kind of canopy we can imagine light being diffused and fragmented into slowly moving optical patterns and diffracted umbras as the sun traces its trajectory through the sky.

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

Recursive Pavilion – Marc Fornes

Mark explains the process in more detail here:

‘Recursive Growth is an investigation into the recursive subdivision of surfaces as a mean of growth, associated with to the notion of pressure. This effect which occurs when a force is applied on a surface becomes a potential for structural form finding. In this example pressure is applied as a vector on the centroid of each face triggering a cracking process into four triangulate faces. If the direction of the force is based on gravity and the original face is horizontal the surface is ‘cracked’ into three identical faces while the forth one introduces a new form-type for each new generation’

Kretsfamilj – Ulla Wiggen [1965]

Between 1963 and 1969 Ulla Wiggen made a series of paintings of circuit board schematics and close up studies of the interiors of electrical components and technical equipment. Elements of realism, abstraction and minimalism co-exist in equal measures but seen in the context of the Ulla’s later work these meticulous acrylic paintings of conductive pathways might be more accurately viewed as a kind of portraiture.

Simultantolkning – Ulla Wiggen [1965]

The works range from straight-forward representation of amplifier systems to more complex compositions that depict elements combined from different systems. The compositional concern and aesthetic constraint gives rise to an imaginary and speculative utility – a pataphysical flow of induction, capacitance and impedance based on spatial abstraction.

Kanalväljare – Ulla Wiggen [1967]

Pulsgivare – Ulla Wiggen [1967]

Minnescentrum Gott Minne – Ulla Wiggen [1967]

Moment, a show of Ulla Wiggen’s paintings from the period is on at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 13 April 2013 to 25 August 2013.

‘The works, even though they lack figurative characters, have an immediate human relevance, either through anthropomorphosis of the machines, or as dealing with the complex relationship between man and machine.’ – Fredrik Liew

Förutsättningar – Ulla Wiggen [1967]

Möjliga-Kopplingar – Ulla Wiggen [1968]

Related Posts:
Hubert Blanz – Geospaces
Microchic: Cara McCarthy’s Diagramming Microchips & Theo Kamacke’s PCB Hieroglyphics
Polyforms & Conduits [Peter Halley & John Powers]

La Porte Monumentale – René Binet

René Binet’s Esquisses Décoratives contains a sequence of architectural designs based on the biological and morphological illustrations found in Ernst Haeckel’s well-known ‘Art Forms in Nature’. Envisioning tiny shell-like skeletons as monumental architectural structures, Binet [1866–1911] scaled Haeckel’s microscopic biomineral creatures into decorative amoeboid façades, protozoic trellises and Art Nouveau designs sprawling with heliozoic motifs.

A PDF of René Binet’s complete Esquisses Decoratives can be found here.

Esquisses Décoratives – René Binet

Esquisses Décoratives – René Binet

Esquisses Décoratives – René Binet

Esquisses Décoratives – René Binet

Esquisses Décoratives – René Binet

Binet’s study of Haeckel’s lithographs of radiolaria culminated in the design for his Monumental Gate, located on the Place de la Concorde, at the Eastern entrance of the Exposition Universelle (World Faire) held in Paris in 1900. Gustave Geffroy notes in his introductory foreword to Esquisses Décoratives that Binet’s main inspiration for ‘Porte Monumentale’ were a family of radiolaria known as Cyrtoidea. The design was heavily based on one radiolaria illustration alone – the Cyrtoidea Pterocanium trilobum.

La Porte Monumentale – René Binet

Cyrtoidea – Ernst Haeckel with Clathrocanium reginae [top row, second left] and Cyrtoidea Pterocanium trilobum [middle row, far right]

La Porte Monumentale – René Binet

According to Geffroy ‘Binet viewed the Clathrocanium reginae as the most beautiful and a perfect representation of the richness and logic of the Radiolaria family’ In doing so Binet becomes a solid precursor to current trends in parametric architectural design dealing with the explicit rendering of natural forms and structures.

EDF0 – Raven Kwok

Raven Kwok combines recursive geometry with elastic easing motions, in Processing, to create animations composed of nebulous subdivided structures that organically transform and reconfigure over time. Works such as EDF0 insinuate the membranous structures of soap bubbles and foam dispersions well as the complex symmetry of micro-marine organisms such as Radiolaria. The works also retain the hard edged self-similar qualities of classic fractal structures such as the Sierpinski Gasket.

EDF0 – Raven Kwok

EDF0 – Raven Kwok

EDF0 – Raven Kwok

EDF0 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

18F44 – Raven Kwok

Ravens most recent work, 18F44, extends EDF0 into three dimensions by implementing z-axis protrusions using groups of intersecting planes. In addition he has created a mechanism which allows separate control of nested levels within this complex structure resulting in erratically animated topologies and mutating surfaces.

Related posts:
Year of the Radiolarian
Real World Menger Sponge

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Kyuha Shim, a research fellow and data visualization specialist at SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT, has created a series of works exploring the extrusion of classic 2-D mandala geometry into 3-D objects. After first realising some software, in Processing, to create hypotrochoidal and epitrochoidal forms he has subsequently generated spheres with subdivided surfaces whose facet heights are based on their brightness. Other forms appear to explore the periodic tessellation of spheres to create ornamental globes and spherical representations of form constants.

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

One of the models Kyuha used in his research was the Tibetan Vajradhatu Mandala [Diamond Realm]. Vajradhatu is unique among many others in that it employs recursive geometry extending from its center-point or axis-mundi. The cosmological architectonic paradigm of the Vajradhatu is defined by cardinal self-containing circles [thoughtforms]. These patterns are visual representations of the inflections of mantra and prove that geometry is a much better way then any other to depict the cyclic internal doWhile() loop of self-similar, rhythmic, syllabic constructs.

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Mandala – Kyuha Shim

Related Posts:

Temari – The art of Japanese Threadballs
Spherophilia – A Survey of Spheroids
Louise Despont – Geometric Channeling
The Jantar Mantar & The Algomantra
Jonathan McCabe – Biological Mandalas

Flying Proletarian – Yuri Avvakumov

In the mid 1980′s architect Yuri Avvakumov produced a series of sculptural works commemorating Soviet Constructivist art and architecture of the 1920′s. The works mainly comprise of delicate wire-frame structures or ‘architectons’, with platforms, which pay homage to artist/architects such as El Lissitzky, Tatlin and Melnikov. The sculptures celebrate the worker, the sportsman as well as the ‘agitprop’ speaker within the construct of the socialist utopia. As architectural propositions they address both the sublime and the surreal simultaneously. For example, Flying Proletarian is devised as a swing for open-air exercises where two teams of competitors, each with a seat equipped with a lever propelling a pair of wings, complete for elevation.

Tribune for Sportsman-Parliamentarian – Yuri Avvakumov

Tribune for a Leninist – Yuri Avvakumov

Red Tower – Yuri Avvakumov

Worker & Farmer International – Yuri Avvakumov

Polar Axis – Yuri Avvakumov

In Polar Axis three ladders cross between two mirrors (a round one and a square one) and form an imaginable axis of infinite length going through different worlds. The work is ‘dedicated to persons who, while striving for the ideal, come to perceive the real.’

Rostrum for a Sportsman/Parliamentarian is a wedge like, multi-tier tribune for simultaneous addresses by a team of speakers. Wherever no meetings are held, it is used as a trampoline.

Jupiter Tomb – Yuri Avvakumov

Jupiter_Tomb – Yuri Avvakumov

Jupiter_Tomb – Yuri Avvakumov

Jupiter Tomb was intended as a monument/testament to ‘all the artists of the world, and those who know me – according to Malevich’ and was to include a Hevelius telescope on its summit to watch Jupiter.

Crystal Tower – Yuri Avvakumov

Dominoleum – Yuri Avvakumov

Dominoleum – Yuri Avvakumov

Other series of works such Dominos and House of Cards employ the modularity of familiar objects to create composite combinatorial structures where individual components generate form-finding arrangements. Yuri’s Dominoleum proposes a mausoleum whose surface facets imply number sequences through the use of domino tilings. Crystal Tower uses translucent playing cards and combines a lower rigid tensgrity lattice with an upper top heavy structure. Subscribing to expectations of the ‘house of cards’ game, it appears to be on the point imminent collapse.

Linkscale – Maj Plemenitas

Maj Plemnitas architectural propositions, explored in his Linkscale thesis project, resemble intricate mineral-like structures, computational moss cultivated through algorithmic accretion and machines grafted together from organic material.

We may imagine that a few of the shyer corners of Greg Egan’s Permutation City might contain textures and forms such as those exposed in Linkscale. Fractured self-similar calcium-deposited sinter terraces encrusting cubo-futurist facades interspersed with iterative Bryophyta mapping their territories across brutalist terrains in irregular tessellations of differentiated green.

Rc5 – Maj Plemenitas

Linkscale – Maj Plemenitas

Linkscale – Maj Plemenitas

Linkscale – Maj Plemenitas

Rc5 – Maj Plemenitas

Egan’s Permutation City metropolis is a fragment of a ‘Garden of Eden’ configuration of an infinitely-expanding, massively complex cellular automaton universe based on a fictional, Turing-complete cellular automaton known as TVC [Turing/Von Neumann/Chiang]

Simon Katan – Cube with Magic Ribbons

Simon Katan’s audio-visual piece Cube with Magic Ribbons takes the visual form of an electronic circuit diagram that behaves as a live musical score and performative sequencer simultaneously. Temporal multi-modal relationships between visual elements and sound events are actuated by a ‘tape head’ as it follows the path of the wire. If, for example, a tape head crosses a ‘capacitor’ bridge then the crisp crackle of electrical discharge is heard synchronously with its visual representation. Rectangles resembling resistors generate notes of varying pitch and depending on their sequential alignment generate tonal cascades.

Cube with Magic Ribbons – Simon Katan

Extra tape heads, as well as circuit elements, can be added and configured in a performative context so that the branching wire structures and paths of numerous tape heads collude to unfold an increasingly complex musical structure. Simon cites the work of M.C.Escher as an influence on the work, we might also see Cube with Magic Ribbons as audio-visual interpretation of Paul Klee’s maxim, ‘taking a line for a walk’ – or more accurately taking a tape head for a walk.

Related:
Vague Terrain – The Schematic as Score
Aristides Garcia – Hexagrama [Metatronic Clockwork Sequencing]
Music Animation Machine – Spatio-Temporal Insights into Musical Structure
Lawrence Halprin’s Motations & Ecoscores
Daphne Oram – Oramics [Drawing sound]

Limits To Growth – Mitchell Whitelaw

Well known within the digital media and generative arts community for his research and writing as well as his own artistic practice, Mitchell Whitelaw has recently updated his online folio of essays, artworks and data visualisation projects. ‘Ten Questions Concerning Generative Computer Art’ [PDF] recently linked from his site, authored by a group of artists and academics including Mitchell, will be of particular interest to practitioners of generative art who are engaged in some of the key questions and theoretical discussions attached to the movement. The paper is not afraid to ask some philosophically weighted and ontologically biased questions such as: What is it like to be a computer that makes art?

‘In this paper we pose ten questions we consider the most important for understanding generative computer art. For each question, we briefly discuss the implications and suggest how it might form the basis for further discussion’

Limits To Growth – Mitchell Whitelaw

In October 2011 I interviewed Mitchell for the 40th edition for Neural Magazine – ‘The Generative Unexpected’ making for a port of entry into Mitchell’s thoughts on generative art as well as musings on his personal artworks.

PP: It might be argued that some of the main themes infused in generative art are those to do with a kind of techno-utopianism and futurism. Have you come across any generative artworks that deal with dystopian themes or have a sense of anachronism about them? More importantly are the technologies and software used in creating these artworks inherently defining their aesthetics?

It’s true that there’s a flavour of the techno-utopian to a lot of digital generative art, especially in the online digital scene. The founding principle of generative art is, inescapably, the generative capacity of its own system, so perhaps it is optimistic by definition? Online culture – or the real-time social media flow of projects, memes and links that we tend to bathe in – is also techno-utopian at its core, still strongly influenced by the West-Coast startup culture of the companies involved. But with a bit of digging some more diversity emerges; the work of my friend Jon McCormack for example, is highly reflective about the nature / technology relationship – though it sometimes conceals its ambivalence under a very beautiful surface. Another Australian artist – Murray McKeich – makes work that is both anachronistic and dystopian, like his pZombies, gruesome avatars for generative agency composited from scanned rubbish.

Fugu – Jon McCormack, Ben Porter, James Wetter

On the other hand the flipside of techno-utopia is real richness and generative excess – the ability of formal systems to reveal terrains of sublime complexity. At best this “maximalist” strand of generative practice can induce a state of wonder, little chinks of access to the unthinkable complexity of the real material world.

Do the technologies define aesthetics? They certainly shape the aesthetics powerfully – but at least now the field of technology is more open and malleable for artists than ever before. It might be that the most important new works in this field are coding platforms or communities, rather than art or design projects. Processing won a Golden Nica, after all. But in this field monolithic “technologies” are increasingly breaking down – Processing for example is very influential, and there is certainly a Processing “look”, but with a new framework or library appearing every other week, we can’t blame technology for limited diversity in the field.

PP: Much generative art is concerned with certain kinds of abstraction and systematised multiplicity of form without a framework of proposition, resolution and conclusion. Do you think there is any room for a sense of narrative in generative art? Could you give me examples of generative artworks that deal with narrative successfully?

Achilles – Brandon Morse

I would argue that every generative artwork involves a framework of proposition, resolution and conclusion. It is the formal and procedural structure of the generative system that creates the work: a set of entities, attributes, relationships, process, rules, constraints, and visualisations (more here). The problem, for the way generative art is both made and received, is that that system is often hard to get at – it’s an abstract thing, which the artist may or may not describe or publish. A lot of work in the digital generative scene operates in an image culture where “look” is valued over process or concept. So although it’s sometimes hard to access, I would argue that there is often a narrative inside even the most “retinal” generative art – it’s the narrative of the system. Sometimes it’s fairly clear – for example Brandon Morse’s wonderful procedural animations of collapsing structures (also another dystopian work!). For me Morse’s work is wonderfully poignant because it works by resemblance – it reminds us of real things collapsing – but it also works by metonymy, referring to the idealised world of computer graphics and simulation; so it seems like the simulation itself is image Achilles (2009) – photo by Paul Prudence).

PP: Each year we see different algorithms come into fashion as tools for the generative artist. Perlin Noise, Circle Packing, Voronoi, Reaction-Diffusion and Sub-divisioning algorithms are good examples. How important is it for an artwork to hide traces of the software and algorithm that was used to generate it it? Can you predict what the next big algorithm might be? Or do you see any new potential in an old or overlooked algorithm?

If you need to hide the traces of your algorithm, change your algorithm. I too am fascinated by the algo-memetic fashion parade that moves through digital design and generative art. This relates to the question of look vs system; these systems seem to reproduce using their appearance as a sort of lure – it’s a bit like sexual selection in a memetic ecology, survival of the prettiest. As a result people seem to apply them without any understanding or interest in the system or process. I wrote last year about the Voronoi algorithm along these lines. So algo-fashions will come and go, but for me the most rewarding work is always a result of deep engagement with the generative system – taking a system and hacking it into something else entirely, or deriving new systems. Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen for example have a long track record of inventing algorithms that you can’t just grab off the shelf – their Breed and Ima Traveller works are sort of mutant cellular automata – but really they don’t fit any clear template. Nervous System also implement new systems: they go to the scientific literature in biology, or even run their own physical trials, and implement models from scratch. There aren’t many designers currently with the ability to do that.  Jonathan McCabe is another good example of this; his multi-scale Turing patterns are a genius hack of a very old algorithm. Jonathan’s Origami Butterfly process is completely new (and equally distinctive).

Breed – Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen

So there isn’t a Platonic shelf somewhere stocked with generative algorithms for designers to select from. The space of potential generative systems is unimaginably massive. Make one up, or at least hack an existing one into something else. Even very simple changes to existing systems can be very productive. For years I have been playing with systems based on Murray Eden’s growth model – perhaps the simplest (and first) ever model of biological growth. There’s much more to explore.

PP: What is the role of serendipity and non-determinism in the formulation of a successful generative artwork?

When teaching generative art my colleague Tim Bro­ok initially bans his students from using randomness. I don’t do the same, but I can see the logic of it: randomness adds meaningless variation. Used directly, it’s just that – meaningless variation that can give a false impression of richness. But it can be very handy – for example when exploring the range of outcomes of a complex system, randomising its parameters can throw up useful samples of the generative space of that system. Again it’s about understanding the system. Serendipity is another thing; I think most generative artists work hard to cultivate serendipity, to entice systems into a state where pleasant surprises emerge. Many artists hand-pick “candidates” from large populations of generated works – seeking out those serendipitous moments. Although variation is fundamental to generative work, it’s interesting to observe reactions to Written Images, where each volume is a unique variant of the collected works, with no opportunity for artists to pick favourites. Not having final control over each artefact is still a bit scary (for me at least).

Watching The Sky – Mitchell Whitelaw

PP: In your Watching The Sky piece there is almost a tendency to study the image in a forensic manner, to try and decode the work, and to find environmental patterns in relation to patterns in the work. This method of analysis is in almost direct contrast to the usual manner in which a data visualisation might be constructed, where an artist decides on a specific representational system beforehand to create clarity and make a point. Perhaps you could comment a bit more on how data visualisation might move forward in this respect.

I am drawing on other work here – especially the early work of Lisa Jevbratt, like her classic 1:1. Jevbratt outlines a sort of data-mysticism, a view of data as a reservoir of unknown potential, and shows fine-grained patterns without concern for “readability”. In Watching the Sky (and related work) I just use images as a data source; this is a simple ploy to introduce richness by working with rich, unstructured data – and data with a complex (but legible) relationship to the world. That work has certainly shaped my thinking on visualisation. Maintaining the “unstructured” complexity of the image as a data source – rather than reducing it to statistical features – is a great way to provide contextual cues. The commonsExplorer project I did with Sam Hinton – a visual explorer for Flickr Commons streams – uses tiny cropped “core samples” that offer tell tale clues about the source images.

The other idea at work here (and in Jevbratt’s work) is a sense of data as (a) material; as something with texture or grain that can be felt as much as analysed. I have experimented with making these ideas literal in data-form projects like Weather Bracelet and Measuring Cup.

PP: In one of your papers you discuss synaesthesia and cross-modality in contemporary audio visuals. It seems that an important criteria for a successful synaesthetic artworks is in meaningful, metaphorical or conceptual cross-wiring of sound and video – and not just a mechanical translation between the two. What other criteria are important in a successful cross-modal artwork?

Cross-modal or “coupled” audiovisuals exemplify one of the key questions of digital media – we could call it the mapping problem. If the basic materials of the work are digital – that is, abstract patterns that can travel through any number of different substrates – then how do we make them perceivable? Or, how do we choose a mapping, a way of making data available to perception? Manovich calls this the “built-in existential angst” of digital media. So of course there are an infinity of possible ways to connect sound and image – either mapping one into the other, or generating both from some common data source. I actually like mechanical or automatic mappings. Because they are stable and consistent they let us soak in the relationship, the map itself; and these automatic maps are often quite subtle and fine-grained, compared to more composed or intentional relationships. In Robin Fox’s work for example a simple (polar) oscilloscope display creates images from audio signals – but Fox explores the mapping in depth, working out how to “play” it, reverse-engineering the audio signal to create images and revealing surprising correspondences. Of course automatic mappings can be incredibly boring – how many modified graphic equaliser visualisations do we need to see – but I think this is often because the mapping is filtered through too many abstractions and interventions; it becomes a set of parameters.

Casey Reas – Process Compendium [A]

PP: There has been a huge influence of generative art in recent years on traditional drawing techniques such as painting and sculpture. In reverse direction, what ways, if any, can generative artists learn from traditional plastic arts?

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 Le Witt. In teaching programming to designers, I have students write and execute a Le Witt 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. 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.

PP: What early interests did you have that might have lead you to your current path as an artist and academic in this field? 

Music – which I don’t do much of any more, but it was a big part of my world for a long time. Music (or Western music anyway) is systematised and symbolic, but also immediate and affective. That combination has always interested me. Reading Gödel, Escher, Bach – as well as lots of popular science stuff on complex systems – was influential. I was playing around with computers from around the time of the Apple II; later I convinced my father to buy an Amiga 1000, ostensibly to be used in his architecture business. It didn’t ever do much architecture but I used it to make lots of bad graphics and music. Also I grew up in an outer suburb, surrounded by wild bushland; I’m a romantic nature boy at heart.

PP: Can you tell me a bit about how the dual role of essayist/writer and artist works in your situation. The dialectical relationship must create a certain amount of self-reflexivity on both sides?

Writing is fundamentally another kind of making – when it works, text and ideas are a pretty heady medium. So to some extent it’s all practice, or at least speculation, experimentation, thinking of various sorts. When it works best, the practical work can trial or extend the writing, and the writing can contextualise, interpret and unpack the art work. “Practice led research” works for me as an approach – especially if you don’t split art-making and writing along neat practice / theory lines.

PP: Can you tell me about any projects you have planned for the future, any new books in the pipeline or art projects in progress?

Since 2008 I’ve been researching and developing interactive visualisations of cultural collections datasets, working with partners including the National Archives of Australia and most recently the National Gallery of Australia. The work is challenging and rewarding; I enjoy the way data vis can span the poetic and the prosaic, and the immersive richness of large data sets. That line of work has been pulling me away from “art”, which is fine with me – I generally find the edges and interfaces around creative digital culture and practice more interesting than the portion of it inside gallery walls. But the writing is also ticking over, mostly on digital materiality and the aesthetics of computational art and design. There’s a new book in there somewhere, I hope.