Archives for the Month of June, 2009

Flickr Fruits #28

flickrs28
1044 – NataJenne

NataJenne’s Circles set combines recursive structures with circle packing to produce a set of compositions reminiscent of bubble aggregations, albeit with a synthetic ordering based on simple rule-sets. ‘1044’ relies on a considered choice of colours together with an algorithm that adds new circles which are aware of their predecessor’s direction (creating branching structures). Also recommended is the Mazes set where nodes and paths conspire to produce complex diagrams and schemas.

Veaone’s Experimental works09 set also shares a affinity for rarefied and subtle colour palettes. The works appear to examine an interplay between order and abstraction, gridded underlying structures break into rivlets and flows. The works have the feel of a mix between geological illustrations of earth morphologies and the exploding architectural plans of a wild style graffiti.

Toxi aka Karsten Schmidt reveals a repurposed Processing sketch orginally from 2003. Fieldlines explores ‘the beauty of tracing a simple process over time’ and as toxi adds it is ‘one of the standard design patterns in generative art’. On inspection the lines appear to demarcate invisible forcefields. Charged nodes appear to dissapate or attract energy, visualising vortices and filaments of an unseen force. A couple tags on the work reveal that Fieldlines is a visualisation of magnetic dipole phenomena.

Eva Schindling – Visualising sound collisions and other generative systems.

Phyllotaxis Sphere - Eva Schindling
Phyllotaxis Sphere – Eva Schindling

Eva Schindling uses a variety of computational and generative methodologies to create a range of graphic monochromatic works dealing with emergence, system theory, and the computational modelling of nature.

In Liquid Sound Collision Eva has produced a 3D print from a data interpretation of sound waves colliding, the resultant turbulent form instructs us to consider the invisible process of pressure being transmitted through a gas, as audio meets audio head on.

Her Reaction Diffusion sketch is a of marriage of Op-Art and Biology. Organic black and white patterns, Moire effects, convolutions and distortions are created with smooth linear transitions. The works utilise well know models to compute swirling pattern formations, The Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction as well as Reaction Diffusion Equations.

Eva’s Flickr sets of works, sketches and notes can be found here

Selected Tweets #2

tweets2
Rule 30 – Kristoffer Myskja

Microblogging: Selected Tweets, during May, from my Twitter stream.

Marvellous myriad of experimental scores and anarchic aphorisms on musical notation. Notations – John Cage (PDF) at Ubu.

‘Images du monde visionnaire’, cut-up of patterns & textures from explorer of inner territories, Henri Michaux also at Ubu.

Art machines form Kristoffer Myskja, particularly wonderful is the one for generating a rule 30 Cellular Automata.

Magnetic termites construct mounds according to fixed, genetically inherited axes via passed down DNA blueprints at Environmentalgraffiti.

Binary cross-stitch for Alan Turing. Literal translations of titles to stitched binary – Cody Trepte.

The secret life of geophysical magnetism. Semi-fictional animated visualisations from Semiconductor.

Varietal Urbanus Female and other miraculous mechanical anima from Choe U Ram.

Stan Vanderbeek – Symmetrics (1972) Hypnotic geometric modulations.

Elegant Harmongraphic glyphs at Subblue.

Patabotany, Pataecology & Patabotanical Morphology via Foam. Alfred Jarry meets Biololgy.

Tetris Effect – Playing Tetris for a long durations can cause hypnogogic and spatial ‘flashbacks’.

Pigmentation of seashells reveals insights into neural network interaction at SeedMagazine.

South London flat transformed into a gemstone cavern – Roger Hiorn.

10 ways of drawing music. Experiments in music notation from some of the 20th Century’s finest composers. Exhibition, New Langton Arts, San Francisco.

Rhythm 23 (1923) – Hans Richter. Abstract geometric cinema from 1923.

Self-portraits derived from MRI & CAT scan data – Angela Palmer.

Blinkity Blank – Norman McLaren. Animated syneasthetic Ideograms.

Flickr Venn Mastery from Frank C.

Live AV environments by Modulate

Kinetic solar system mobiles from Daniel Chadwick

Synthgear & Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Mobieus Music

moebiusMusic
Moebius Music Box – Ranjit Bhatnagar

The excellent Synthgear blog doesn’t restrict itself to waxing over the latest modular synth modules but also has some nice articles on fringe aspects of musicality and sound generation. Take for example its posts on audio waveform jewelry, sound generating fish, or a very gorgeous Atari 400 mod.

It also points to a project by Ranjit Bhatnagar, the Moebius Music Box, an automatic music machine whose perforated roll exists upon our favourite paradoxical topological surface. The Moebius Strip as you know has some curious properties. A line drawn along the middle of the strip will meet back up with itself but at the “other side” and will be double the length of the original strip of paper. This single continuous curve demonstrates that the Moebius strip has only one surface.

Ranjit points out that ‘What you end up with is a tune that is played upside-down and backwards, and then just backwards, and then upside-down and backwards again. Over and over, forever’

One must resist attempting to imagine in an Hofstadter-esque manner what if the score played a version of Bach’s Endlessly Rising Canon, and more so why didn’t Escher incorporate this notion in his own Mobeius Strip drawings? A complete explanation of the interplay between exotic topology, ants and fugues is beyond the boundaries of this post, so we direct the reader, of course, to Douglas Hofstadter’s ‘Godel Escher, Bach’.

Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Moebius Music Box was constructed in a day as part of his Instrument-a-day project, a Flickr set of pictures of his ingenious audio contraptions can be found here.

ComplexCity Mappings – Lee Jang Sub

Complexcity - Lee Jang Sub
ComplexCity (details) – Lee Jang Sub

Picking up on the inherent similarity between transportation systems in cities and the morphology of leaves and trees, is Lee Jang Sub’s ComplexCity series of works. These elaborate mappings of roads and highways mimic the venation patterns in leaves and the rhizomatic configurations of tree branches, creating delicate organic filigree structures in a range of different mediums, including light.

‘This project is an exploration to find a concealed aesthetic by using the pattern formed by the roads of the city which have been growing and evolving randomly through time, thus composing the complex configuration we experience today.
I perceive the city’s patterns as living creatures that I recompose to form an urban image’ – Lee Jang Sub

Luminous Light Scultptures – Alejandro and Moira Sina

Sina Lightworks
Spinning Shaft – Alejandro and Moira Sina

Some particularly radiant and luminous offerings come in the form of a variety of lightworks from Alejandro and Moira Sina. The couple’s work combine innovation in technique using high frequency electronics with gas as well as expertise in the architectural domain. The resultant works range from interactive installations to works in museum spaces, as well as kinetic sculptures and mobiles. The geometric arrangements, alignments and abstractions of linear forms sometimes recall the animations of Oscar Fischinger – in both cases bright saturated neons dominate the colour palette. The kinetic and mobile works comprise of moving prismatic structures, perfect vehicles to configure the electromagnetic spectrum combinatorially and generate overlapping and interfering light transformations.

Banded Agates, Sonic Hydrodynamics & the BZ Reaction.

Belousov–Zhabotinsky
Belousov–Zhabotinsky Oscillation

The generative animatronics of the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction is created by non-linear oscillations between two chemicals, usually a bromide and an acid. The arising concentric ring patterns are reminiscent of bacteria and fungus growth, no surprise then that the BZ reaction can be used as a model for biological development.

As with all kinds of patterns of periodicity, the hallmark concentric gradients of BZ reaction seem to crop up in other domains too and at much different growth rates. Periodic variations in the precipitation of specific minerals during Banded Agate formation creates similar concentric arrangements. Where as the BZ reaction takes minutes to produce ornamentation, the formation of Banded Agates can take millions of years.

Flickr provides a great hunting ground for some fine Banded Agates from across the globe. Agateman’s picture of this Coyamito specimen from Mexico radiates a fine colour palette that only Kuler could be jealous of. The Tube Agate shows off the signature ringed pattern in fine pencil line detail, the marble-esque rounded China Rain Eye could be freeze frame from a BZ experiment in itself.

AgateBands
Banded Agate

The Laker Agate has a distinctly bacteriopoetic arrangement of organisms growing upon tangerine facade. Another picture from T shearer, shows fine crisp bands and includes annotation regarding the timescale of agateogenesis – a rough estimate is 10’s of millions of years! Next time you take a break while your computer deals with a 2 hour Sunflow render, take thought.


Hans Jenny
, in his book Cymatics, notes that the effect of sound waves on liquids and powders also has the ability to shape the substances into banded hydrodynamic and precipitative landscapes, once more mimicking the chemical oscillations of the BZ reaction. There is no doubt that further explorations into microscopic crevices and macroscopic craters will yield more traces of this archetypal non linear dynamical system.