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.

Golden Parachutes, Rx8xR – James Bills

James Bills series of projection drawings, Golden Parachutes, are generated by random numbers obtained from a series of of polyhedral dice throws. Each aleotoric drawing uses a different system, indicated by its title (such as 1xRxR or 8x8xR), to translate those numbers into indeterminate isometric lattices characterised by spectrographic elevation columns. Gold leaf gilding punctuates the upper parts of these columns resulting in illuminated grids of squares that hover above the main architectural structures.

Golden Parachutes, RxRxR – James Bills

A golden parachute (similar to a golden handshake) is a ‘no strings attached’ severance agreement between a company and an executive employee allowing the employee to receive significant benefits such as cash bonuses and stock options if employment is terminated.

The contradiction of rewarding failure, among many other illogical and immoral transactions of the financial sector, here becomes an inspiration and a focal point of transmutation in James’ drawings. It’s an alchemical procedural where he is, arguably, turning something that is shit into gold – where harmonious configurations are remodeled from rotten collapsing economic infrastructures.

Golden Parachutes, 8xRx9 – James Bills

Golden Parachutes, 8x8xR – James Bills

Golden Parachutes, 1xRxR – James Bills

Kaleidoscope Cylinder – James Bills

Class Warfare II – James Bills

Other drawings by James, such as Class Warfare II and Kaleidoscope Cylinder similarly rely on mathematical procedures to create hard-edged graphical structures.

About the Actual and the Virtual – Ivo Schüssler at the Rules exhibtion. Photo: Johannes Scherg

NODE’13 – Forum for Digital Arts is currently well under-way in Frankfurt. Combining exhibitions, A-V performances, creative coding workshops, symposiums and lectures, the festival is heavily connected with the video synthesis tool-kit VVVV, and more so the community that revolves around it. Dataisnature has been consistently posting on projects made with VVVV [its software of choice] since 2005 – related links can be found at the bottom of this page.

Not content to solely mediate around VVVV, Node 13 actively seeks to explore philosophical and conceptual questions arising out of the melting pot of current digital art practices and creative coding as it did in previous incarnations. The current exhibition and symposium lay testament to the breath of work explored at Node as well as the many pertinent questions arising from the artistic use of computers, software and code.

Eno Henze, curator of the Rule exhibition:

‘The Rules’ investigates the correlation of working with ‘rules’ of the computer and the transformative processes in our society. We discover an interrelationship between the practical, aesthetical work with the computer and the alteration of our reality. This means a huge responsibility for the use of digital tools. ‘Generative design’ is not only a question of aesthetics and the search for a new ‘operating system society’, not only a question of politics.

Fabricmachine [live] – Kathrin Stumreich. Photo Jeanne Charlotte Vogt

In two days theorists and artists of international renown will discuss the rules of the digital world and their influence on other sets of rules – society, biology or art. Which autonomous creative powers are prevalent in computers and how do they change our understanding of all the areas which are in a process of transformation by computer technologies? In addition to the philosophy of digital media, the focus will be on the relationship between code and consciousness, the theory of the ‘New Aesthetic’, the potentials of synthetic biology or the shaping of public opinion via social networks (liquid democracy)’

You can find more information on the ongoing synmposium, as well as detailed list of the speakers who are/have been involved here.

‘The Rules exhibition examines the rulesets of machines, humans and social organisations. The central topics are the rules of computers and their transformatory effects on the processes of our society. Software produces new ways of behaviour and new realities. This results in a critical responsibility when we are using digital tools, but also in new opportunities for design’

You can follow Node’13 happenings on the associated Facebook page and the Node Forum Flickr stream.

Related:

Numbercult – Triangulation Music
Aristides Garcia – Hexagrama [Metatronic Clockwork Sequencing]
NODE10 – Forum for Digital Arts
Mattia Casalegno – Dissipative Structures & Cartesian Thought-Forms
Eno Henze – The Human Factor
Enzo Varriale – Brainwave Maps & Abstract Surfaces
WiiWiiWiiWii
Realm of the VVVVertex
http://www.dataisnature.com/?p=320
Computational Radiolarians & VVVVideo

Eve – Numbercult

Numbercult has created a series of visual music pieces that explore the use of Voronoi tessellation, and intersecting nodal networks using VVVV. The works are marked by a refined use of colour, and a cross-wiring of sound and video resulting in narratives of pure geometric abstraction.

Eve – Numbercult

Eve – Numbercult

Eve – Numbercult

In ‘Eve’ crisp microscopic sounds augment the movement of a central polygon who appears to be agitated, and simultaneously courted, by a group of nodal circles each of which exert attractive forces over one another through mutual proximity. The delicate use of natural colours, shading and scaling implies the formation of crystals, or the hermetic dynamics of a reactive geo-chemical system in process.

Eve – Numbercult

Eve – Numbercult

‘Collision Music’ uses the detection of particle collisions within a shifting Voronoi triangulation­ mesh to actuate percussive sounds. Each cycle of sound generation is preceded by the motion of an errant particle who acts as a destabiliser to the system – a Glass Bead Game with running commentary from outlandish Delaunay entites.

Connected – Numbercult

Connected – Numbercult

‘Connected’ uses the multi-directionality flow of data to create what Numbercult describes as a ‘graphical/musical sequencer system with a three way flow of information between graphics, sound and external triggers’.

Related:
Matt Shlian – Everything, Everything
Bruce Pollock – A Scroll Through the Alluvial Cellular Terrain
Flight 404 – Voronoi, Flowline & Biometric Butterflies

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System

Jessica Rosenkrantz of Nervous System has recently posted a Flickr set documenting a test run of 3D printed forms that resemble oceanic organisms such sea anemone, coral and barnacles. The prints make use of bold colour palettes to accentuate the topologies of the shapes. The diffused hues combined with subdivided geometries, and sometimes employing strict symmetry, create some exuberant aquatic hyper-realities that wouldn’t seem out of place on a plate from Ernst Haeckle’s Art Forms in Nature.

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System

The processing sketch used to generate the meshes for 3D printing has been developed from an earlier sketch, Barnacles, made for the Writtenimages project. Nervous System’s Barnacles/Spines/Tentacles Flickr set give a visual overview of the evolution of this sketch over time.

Barnacle – Nervous System

Barnacle – Nervous System

‘Each execution of the program, a new random double curved NURBS surface is created for the barnacles to grow on. Colours range from yellow to pink based on generation of the barnacle, yellow barnacles randomly subdivide into pinker and pinker ones. The pores will also be open to different degrees between the different executions of the program’

Related:

Nervous System
George Hart – Echinoderms, Roads Untaken and Deep Structures