Archives for the Month of February, 2013

Node 13: The Rules – Code and Software as a Shapeable Cosmoplastic Material

NodeLogoAbout 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.

Thinking of rules as shapeable, cosmo-plastic material is not new, but since the predictions of its early years (cybernetics) and the ‘practical illustrations’ of the 2000s a natural interpenetration of reality and digital rules has been established which gives new arguments to the discourse. The reflection on the ‘The Rules’ is divided into two complementary formats: an exhibition and a symposium with the same title.

NodeLogoFabricmachine [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
https://www.dataisnature.com/?p=320
Computational Radiolarians & VVVVideo

Numbercult – Triangulation Music

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 - NumbercultEve – Numbercult

Eve - NumbercultEve – Numbercult

Eve - NumbercultEve – 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 - NumbercultEve – Numbercult

Eve - NumbercultEve – 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 - NumbercultConnected – Numbercult

Connected - NumbercultConnected – 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

Nervous System – Colonies & Barnacles

Colony Test Prints – Nervous System 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

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

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