Archives for the ‘no boxes!’ Category

Louise Despont – Geometric Channeling

Correspondence I & II - LouiseDespontCorrespondence I & II – Louise Despont

Louise Despont’s delicate geometric configurations drawn onto vintage ledger papers reveal a personal mytho-hermetic dictionary of esoteric cosmologies and knowledge systems.

The drawings are composed of multiple lines, circles, triangles and hexagons that combine to build architectural constellations, hieroglyphic matrices and crystalline maps of occult correspondences. The local interactions of these simple shapes inter-fuse to generate increasingly complex global structures – an allegory for the way fragments of knowledge accrete together to create holistic doctrines. This kind of procedural precision obsessed drawing, where one has no idea of the end result, could be seen as a kind of channeling of forms. Here drawing is a mantra for invoking figurative manifestations via the nested loops of hand-eye-brain feedback loop algorithm.

No.14 – Louise DespontNo.14 – Louise Despont

Anagrams of  Vision No.3 – Louise DespontAnagrams of Vision No.3 – Louise Despont

Her work reminds us of the drawings of Emma Kunz and Augustin Lesage who both employed complex geometric configurations to create visual archetypes of esoteric universalism.

Garden Aerial – Louise DespontGarden Aerial – Louise Despont

It also seems that Louise’s secret ideographic structures have similarities to the pages of the famously mysterious Voynich Manuscript which represent the alchemical phase transitions and syncretic relationships between the animal, vegetable and mineral domains. We have further inklings of the works of Wenzel Jamitzer, the Nuremberg Goldsmith who, in the 16th Century, explored infinite variations of perspective from the five fundamental platonic bodies.

Swedenborg's Index – Louise DespontSwedenborg’s Index – Louise Despont

For Calder – Louise DespontFor Calder – Louise Despont

‘I think both the process and the outcome of that process can be meditative and I’m interested in art that has a meditative quality. For me drawing is a starting point to exploring energies and dynamics that are unseen but felt’.

Related Posts:

Emma McNally – Emergent Cartographies
Robert Horvitz – Quantum Symmetries
Emma Kunz – Geometric Visionary
Bruce Pollock – A Scroll Through the Alluvial Cellular Terrain
Erwin Keustermans – Patterns by Partition

The Spatio-Lumino-Chronodynamic Towers & Sculptures of Nicolas Schöffer

Nicolas_SchöfferThe Spatiodynamic Luminodynamic & Chronodynamic works of Nicolas Schöffer

The Cybernetic works of Nicolas Schöffer revived elements of constructivism and kinetic art into a new syncretism using light as a binding ingredient. Seemingly dissatisfied with stasis in art, Schöffer explored the potential for creating dynamic variations of cubo-futurist and constructivist forms. The addition of a fourth-dimension of space-time to his sculptures allowed him to investigate what he termed Spatiodynamism, Luminodynamism and Chronodynamism.

Chronos 5 - Nicolas SchöfferChronos 5 – Nicolas Schöffer

La_Tour_cybernétique_de_LiègeLa Tour Cybernétique de Liège – Nicolas Schöffer

Echoing El Lissistsky’s ‘prouns’ defined as the midway point between architecture and painting, Schöffer would extend the scale of his sculptures to monumental proportions. His 52m high Cybernetic Tower in Liège, created in 1961, senses its immediate environment using microphones, hygrometers and anemometers (wind measurement). The information collected from these sensors is used orchestrate the movement of mirrors and lights on the towers, and also to generate environmental sounds to be played back to the city. Viewed at night time the mirrors act more as colour switches giving an overall impression of network interactions and connections inferred via pulsing colours. With nodes of interconnected light existing in a lattice perhaps Schöffer was attempting to mimic the invisible communication infrastructures that were developed during the 50’s and 60’s and who’s influence had grown to create the science of Cybernetics.

Chronos 5 - Nicolas SchöfferTour Lumière Cybernétique – Nicolas Schöffer

Unluckily for Planet Earth Schöffer’s plan for a subsequent tower to be constructed in Paris remains pure speculation – but at least we have some succulent drawings as a consolation. According to some sources Schöffer intended his Tour Lumière Cybernetique to stand 324m tall – the same height as the Eiffel Tower!

Centre Administratif & Centre de Recherches Scientifiques - Nicolas SchöfferCentre Administratif & Centre de Recherches Scientifiques – Nicolas Schöffer

chronos 8 - Nicolas_SchöfferChronos 8 – Nicolas Schöffer

Other works by Schöffer, such as Lux 13 Variations and Chronos 5 , transcend the domain of pure kineticism to exploit light reflections and shadows and their layered permutations and combinations – the essence of Schöffer’s concept of Luminodynamism. Nested cycles of movements create long sequences of unending variation – an early intimation of kind of proto-generative strategy.

Lux13_variations_Nicolas_SchöfferLux 13 Variations – Nicolas_Schöffer

This small post on Schöffer would be aberrant without a mention of László Moholy-Nagy’s masterpiece ‘Light Space Modulator’ an obvious reference point for the Spatio-Chronodynamic aspirations of Schöffer.

Related Posts:

The Constructivism Cosmologies of Richard Lippold
Luminous Light Scultptures – Alejandro & Moira Sina
László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator

Selected Tweets #16: Ghost diagrams, Ocular Revisions, Technoid Holograms & Sculptural Incompatibilities

Selected tweets from my Twitter stream: @MrPrudence

Immaterials_Onformative"Immaterials – Onformative

Ocular Revision by Paul Vanouse is a custom circular gel electrophoresis rig used to visualize DNA bands.

Immaterials by Onformative presents possible dataset visualisations as technoid holograms.

The Roton is Giorgi Sancrsitoforo’s abstract geometrical transparent layered musical score.

Paul Harrison’s Ghost Diagrams generate geometric pattern ‘organism’ tessellations.

Parmenides by Dev Harlan is a projection mapped Stellated Icosahedron with optical patterns/geometries.

OcularOcular Revision – Paul Vanouse

Fleur van Dodewaard’s Sunset Series uses reductive reflections to create artificial sunsets.

Haroon Mirza creates Lautreamontesque kinetic/sonic/glitch sculptural incompatibilities.

Versus by David Letellier is a robo-kinetic sound installation with its own sonic feedback system.

Matthew Picton’s Cartography Sculptures: Maps made from texts significant to each city.

Any Vision from SpringGun Press: Nanopoetics with self-reducing anagram poem created by SEM.

Concentricity 96 by Joshua Kirsch: An interactive light sculpture where omnidirectional movement controls LED arrays.

The_Roton_Giorgi_Sancrsitoforo"The Roton – Giorgi Sancrsitoforo

Improvisations on a Concerto Generator. Delay modulations from Laurie Spiegel at the Bell Labs in 1977.

Bio-sensing art in the 1970s – interview with artist and ecosystems designer Richard Lowenberg at Datagarden.

Bliterations correctly connects the prelude pixellations of Norman Mclaren’s ‘Syncronomy’ with 8-bit games.

Hypogean Wildstyle: Dominik Strzelec’s Byzantine Geology

saturation_speculative_appsSaturation [speculative apps 01] – Dominik Strzelec

Dominik Strzelec uses multiple generative processes to create cut-through organic shapes, implying morphological growth and simultaneously, to use his own term, Byzantine geology. Often utilising Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction simulation coefficients to generate volumetric forms, his works such as Saturation [Speculative Apps 01] also benefit from sets of colour palettes that wouldn’t seem out of place in a work of early 80’s NYC Wild-style graffiti.

saturation_speculative_appsSaturation [speculative apps 01] – Dominik Strzelec

By adding ‘floor-slabs’ to the visualisations we are invited to view these forms as speculative architecture – interconnected oscillation chambers and synthetic hypogean systems. His Byzantine Geology sketches proposition ‘architecture being brought back to it’s geological roots. Where structures are made for peer-troglodytes appreciating the Byzantine beauty of digital sedimentation’.

Am Ostbahnhof Berlin HackerspaceAm Ostbahnhof Berlin Hackerspace – Dominik Strzelec

Related posts:

Banded Agates, Sonic Hydrodynamics & the BZ Reaction
Breed – Driessens & Verstappen: Evolutional Diffusion Lattices
The MandelBulb – Daniel White

Alexandra Roozen – Bitmap Signals & Algorithmic Noise

 Disturb - Alexandra RoozenDisturb – Alexandra Roozen

Alexandra Roozen’s monochromatic drawings mimic bitmap processes, corrupted signals, transmission noise and spatial distributions generated by computer algorithms.

The Disturb series suggests a simulation of screen static, interference and (white) noise. Perhaps these drawings reveal more about the glitch aesthetic than their digital counterparts do. Here the ‘essence’ of corruption had been captured in its purest form and filtered through the corruption of memory itself.

 Untitled Drawing - Alexandra RoozenUntitled Drawing – Alexandra Roozen

One of Grey - Alexandra RoozenOne of Grey – Alexandra Roozen

The Ruis/Noise etches continue the trajectory of human generated noise into a territory approaching asemic writing. On close inspection arrangements of dots and dashes appear to hammer out a code or secret cypher.

 Stripped Drawing - Alexandra RoozenStripped Drawing – Alexandra Roozen

The Untitled Drawings series employ a meticulously robotic and a subtle shading technique which enhances the notion of depth and curvature. These surface object-arrays provide a greyscale homage to the rhythmic multiform modulation mantras of Victor Vasarely.

Related posts:

Lauren Seiden – Gardens of Noise
XXXY – Scenographic Transfigurations
Telcosystems – 12_Series
Flickr Fruits 11 – Perlin Noise
Richard Lazzara – metaCalligraphic

Millefiori – A Hydromagnetic Chromamatrix

Millefiori - Fabian OefnerMillefiori – Fabian Oefner.

Fabian Oefner’s photographed mixtures of interacting ferro-fluids and watercolours appear as orderly distributed cells of polychromatic pigments – each photo a thumbnail sized liquid light show matrix.

Millefiori - Fabian OefnerMillefiori – Fabian Oefner.

Small drops of the magnetic fluid are added to a glass plate and then coerced into forming a landscape of ferro-fluid peaks by a small circular magnet. Fabian then adds different shades of watercolour to the ferro-fluid to disturb the magnetic fields between suspended iron particles.

Millefiori - Fabian OefnerMillefiori – Fabian Oefner.

Where as most reactions of immiscibility generate patterns of randomness, the ones here contain uniformity similar to those found in reaction-diffusion systems. A fine balance between just enough watercolour and too much creates a critically balanced dynamical process. Magnetism, liquid viscosity and surface tension are a few of many variables in this complex hydromagnetic kinetic system resulting in psychedelic patterns at the edge of spatio-temporal chaos.

Related Posts:

Jonathan McCabe – Biological Mandalas
Nervous States & Thunderbolt Pagodas
Flickr Fruits #15: Liquid Projections
Cymatic-ferrofluid – Robert Hodgin

Selected Tweets #15: Perlin Noise Stone Fields, Fluid Phase Abstractions & Humanizing optimization

Selected tweets from my Twitter stream: @MrPrudence

Polar 2d Perlin Field Giuseppe RandazzoPolar 2d Perlin Field – Giuseppe Randazzo.

Stone Fields – Giuseppe Randazzo. Natural circle packing with stones using analogue Subdivision & Perlin Noise strategies.

Observations – Nik Hanselmann. Simulation of scientific instrumentation/systems theory using GL Shaders & Cinder.

Wonderful Little Creatures – Sean Rogg. Heated liquid (al)chemical sound reactions and disturbances.

Impulse 101 – Anthony Antonellis. Acrylic/Projection work using the 4 foundational characters of 8-bit ASCII.

Electronic realization of Cornelius Cardew’s graphic score, ‘Treatise’ by Shawn Feeney. ‘Sine waves are generated from the black areas of the score.’

Iannis Xenakis – Paul Farrington. Abstract graphic score projection which is then interpreted & performed by Nicholas Kok & Psappha.

Liquid Do - Julia BorovayaLiquid Do – Julia Borovaya

Liquid-Do – Julia Borovaya. Solvation – A Molecular-Dynamic Process. Reacting reagents for fluid phase abstractions and sound generation.

Composing With Process – A series, curated by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore, which explores generative approaches to audio composition.

Mouvoir les Pourcentages & Riches Heurs des Signes Aller-Retour. Henri Chopin’s typewriter poems which contain optical patterns made from typographic glyphs.

‘Fast Forward: Conversations with Machines’ [from camera obscura to cybernetics] essay by Joost Rekveld.

Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums – Classic article on ‘Counter-computer’ by Stewart Brand from 1972.

Countercomplex posts on algorithmic symphonies [8-bit style] from one line of code.

Recent drawings from Viktor Timofeev. ‘Humanizing optimization & cyber-archeology’.

Drop City – Colonizing Consciousness with Truncated Dodecahedra

DropCity_Truncated_Icosorhombic_DodecahedraTruncated Icosorhombic Dodecahedra – Drop City

The historical connection between late 1960’s counter-culture communes and the sublime geometry of polyhedral tessellations and geodesic domes is not one that is commonly referenced. In 1969 Drop City, the most celebrated of frontier mystic and counter-culture art communes, won the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Award for contribution to geodesic culture. The Drop City domes were essentially mutations of geodesic form due to being hand-built by trial and error. Perhaps their construction was guided by telepathic communiques from the tessellating lysergic master builders. The Drop City architects saw Fuller as a guru, espousing his humanist attitude, embracing his idiosyncratic syntax, and incorporating his axiomatic doctrines as mantras for a way of synergetic expression. According to Fuller ‘a designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist’.

DropCity_UltimatePaintingThe Ultimate Painting – Drop City

Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College – Nancy Newhall circa 1948Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College – Nancy Newhall circa 1948

The faded photographs of the iconic dome settlement are often conspicuous by their absence of people creating a sense of anachronism – there’s a feeling of space-aged utopianism blended with drop-out anarchism. Sawn-off car roof-tops were used as triangular panels to build the polyhedral dwellings which included ‘Triacontahedral’ and ‘Zonohedral’ structures. One of the most ambitious and largest buildings constructed was a Truncated Icosorhombic Dodecahedra complex. This was a ‘structure made of three 40-foot fused Rhombicosidodecahedra, which housed a community kitchen, a large meeting and entertainment area, a film workshop, a television loft, 2 bathrooms and shower, a laundry room, and a visitor’s area.’

from_the-exhibit_Buckminster-Fuller_Starting_with_the_UniverseBuckminster Fuller – Starting with the Universe

The complex also had its own Theatre Dome, also made of car roof tops, and designed to accommodate a 360° multi-media projection system most likely inspired by the Moviedrome theatres of Stan Vanderbeek of around the same time.

Drop City takes it name from Drop Art (also knows as “art droppings”) – performance artworks informed by the ‘happenings’ instigated by Allan Kaprow in the late 50’s and early 60’s and also inspired by the performances of John Cage at Black Mountain College around the same time.

Geodesic_Dome_Fuller_1952Geodesic Dome – Buckminster Fuller [1952]

The commune was recently celebrated in ‘West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver – a Flickr set of photographs documenting the show can be found here. The companion book to the show includes numerous essays ‘elaboratating on the historical and artistic significance of the counterculture projects of the period within the broader narrative of postwar American art’

Related Posts:

Geo Mutant’s [Buckyball lifeforms]
Bruce Pollock – A Scroll Through the Alluvial Cellular Terrain
Spacelike Tessellations of Tetrahedrons
Cosmic Hierarchy and Radiant Protons

Idrioema – Fossilized Morphologies & Ghost Architectures

Aequa – Idiorema

Idrioema is a multimedia project instigated by Luigi Scotti & Teresa Aguas encompassing separate audio and video works and also pieces that explore cross-modal relationships between sound and image.

A recent work, Aequa, reveals a shifting landscape of reaction diffused artifacts – ghostly layers of emergent biological textures evolving alongside field recordings [street cleaning, water, stones, garbage bins, cars, pumps and alarms]. Familiar sonic environments of banal origin are recontextualised into a mesoscaphic soundtrack for a kind of evolving fossil/bone architecture.

Another series of works, Sonoscopia [found in works – images], reveals a series of sonographic renderings, spliced and cut, and reordered into striated xerox-like diagrams. The drawings invite us to imagine the clicks, cuts, static and sonic abrasions that might coaxed them in to existence.

Working exclusively in B&W the couple have explored the sonification of dynamical systems, cross-transcoding of file-formats as well as many other data transposition techniques to generate their works.

Flickr Fruits #38: Stella Trails, Neocubes, Manifolds & Magnetotypes

STB/S01/120° - Peter JellitschSTB/S01/120° – Peter Jellitsch

Nasa’s International Space Station Star Trails set uses a long exposure technique to reveal the motion of stars as concentric Tron-like light beams punctuated by green glowing auroras [The Northern Lights]. Astronaut Don Petit, currently orbiting the planet as part of the long-duration Expedition 30 Mission, stacked together layers of 30 second long exposures to create 15-20 minute long stellar trails.

Ling Meng’s Magnetism set contains typographic experiments and ‘drawings’ composed of magnetised iron filings. Close inspection of the spatially arranged filings reveal nested levels of organisation – with larger global structures containing fur-like magneto-micro patterns

Peter Jellitsch’s STB set contains hand drawn topologies, manifolds and attractor-like configurations made with pencil and ink. Using virtual simulations of space as a model, he retraces algorithmic constructs, often adding tiny arrows to his drawings, as if to encourage the notion of surface vector flow and fluid dynamics.

Dimitry Tischenko’s Neodynium Magnet set contains a vast array of geometric constructions made from tiny Neodynium magnets – most notably complex polyhedral structures, Bucky Balls and Neocubes.