Archives for the Month of February, 2008

Kokkugia – Morphogenetic Lattices & Reflexive Tessellations

kokkugia

Applying the emergent properties of complex systems such as the self-organising behaviour found in biological patterns and social interactions, Kokkugia uses generative methologies to produce experimental architectural conjecture.

‘Agent-based simulation techniques are used to generate programmatic relationships. Architectural elements such as a façade, plaza, or construction grid are assigned rules or behaviours, which govern the way in which they interact with this field in the form making process. This develops an emergent relationship between program and peculiarities of architectural form, enabling the design process, and resultant architecture to exhibit particular behavioural qualities.

The use of negative space in complex multiform arrangements seems to be a prominent interest. Organic habitable parametric spaces and complex materials are constructed through the layering of geometric lattices. Aesthetically the structures are rich and seductive.

Kokkugia was founded in 2004 by Jonathan Podborsek, Roland Snooks and Rob Stuart-smith and operates in New York and London. The agency was recently involved in the ‘Scripted by Purpose’ exhibition of ‘Explicit and encoded processes’ curated by the Theverymany.

Related:
Living Architecture and Parametric Abstraction

Adam Marks – Calltrace

While the idea of Firefox taking two hours to boot up on a Linux system wouldn’t be the epitome of fun, this is exactly what happens in Calltrace, a runtime visualisation of a computer program’s every function call. Utilising Valgrind, an analysis tool for memory management, debugging, and program profiling, Calltrace uses function call data to drive a custom OpenGL visualisation. The resulting animation, psuedo timelined with glitchy animated blocks, is a fascinating way of experiencing the rhythms, syncopations and cycles of runtime functions operating as they happen. Strangely, it brings back warm memories of watching Defrag running in DOS for the first time, as the operating system visualised the fixing of truncated files. Blocks of colour representing different cases/states of files would be seen to move into their correct defragmented allocations.

Elsewhere at YRY you’ll find examples of filtered video feedback loops and other custom midi-controlled OpenGL software, Monolight for instance, as the basis for VJ systems.

Enzo Varriale – Brainwave Maps & Abstract surfaces

Enzo Varriale
EEG_Brainwaves Mapping – Enzo Varriale

Enzo Varriale’s work in VVVV is marked by muted, metallic colour palettes and a strong graphic style; the gradient accent on the backgrounds helps to counterpart the three-dimensionality of the forms. Particularly of interest are his Brainwave Visualisations where EEG information is gathered over a short period of time and used to inform the outcome of the complex shapes and structures, meshes and synaptic tangles. Elsewhere, in his Abstract Surfaces set, you find crisply rendered outputs of mathematical functions, superfomulae and particle systems, most of which have used spreads (VVVV’s node for array positioning of multiple objects in space) to create a considered complexity.

Node08 Program and Call for Submissions.

node08
Seelenlose Automaten – Patric Schmidt and Benedikt Groß.

Node08 (part of the Luminale light art festival), held in Frankfurt in April 2008, will be dedicated to range of digital art works built using the video synthesis toolkit VVVV. Expect to experience all kinds of digital exotica – from controlled lighting systems to data visualisations, 3d video projections to interactive synaesthetic artworks and lush VJ systems. There will be many workshops ranging from beginner entrées to advanced classes on shader programming and typographic control. There will also be talks and presentations from the main development crew of the software as well as other media artists and academics giving overviews of their related work – For a full program of events click on this link. I will give a presentation of my audio responsive video feedback work – it should be an exciting opportunity to meet up with the 4V community – this being the first event of its kind to celebrate works done with this software which has recently seen a rapidly expanding user base.

If you work with VVVV you might be interested in this call for artworks to be shown in the main NODE08 exhibition Hall, the Diakoniekirche during the festival. An informal jury will select the pieces for the screening.

Lia – Isaidif

Lia - isaidif

Using a semi-autonomous generative drawing system and her trademark interface, Lia’s Isaidif turns browserspace into a real-time abstract artwork where trajectories connect nodes & layers of pixel thick lines to build up densities of textures with a graduated minimalist colour palette. The hermetic robotic clicks, clatters and mechanised audio counterpart increases the feeling of that some kind of apparatus is being constructed, or in operation, with wheels and crane-like structures. Fitting then that Isaidif was produced for last years Kunstmaschinen Maschinenkunst (Art Machines Machine Art) at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt and crated by Katharina Dohm Dr. des. Heinz Stahlhut. The exhibition surveyed the role of the machine in making art beginning with Jean Tinguely’s drawing mechanisms of the 50’s and running through to present day artists such as Lia.

Related drawing machines:

Drawings of Harmonic Motion – Bálint Bolygó
Hektor – Jürg Lehni and Uli Franke
Drawbot – Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Drawing Machine 3.1415926 v.2 – Fernando Orellana
Rapid Action Painters & Artbots – Leonel Moura
Meta-matics – Jean Tinguely
Harmonographs & Spirographs

Jen Stark – Spectrographic Paper Cut

jen Stark.
Cosmological Constant – Jen Stark

Employing a spectrographic range of colour, self-similar shapes and contours in her pieces, Jen Stark’s works might at first appear as if they were computer rendered. Instead she cuts through sheets of layered paper, revealing the colours below and shaping the cut paper into complex sculptures with mathematical precision.

Papermation, an animation completed last year, appears to be a stop-frame animation of paper cuts and compositions. The pulsing movement and sequence of configurations may hold some hints to the secrets of Jen’s construction process. This kind of low-tech approach to animation further reminds me of work by early abstract animators such as Oscar Fischinger and Norman Mclaren