Procedural Networks

Map (detail) – Nigel Peake

Secondstreet contains a set of finely drafted maps that overflow into the territory of emotion and imagination. Abstracting imagined pathways, roads, boundaries and fields to a psychogeographic set of geometries; the final drawings appear flat & doodle-like with repetitive textures containing undulating rhythms. Nigel Peake, a previous student of architecture, cites bike trips at night time and hand drawn maps in history as some of his favourite things!

Reducing the paths, flows and networks to a microscopic level Laura Splan’s Though Patterns series of drawings are inspired by neuroanatomical biology. Using her own blood as ink the ‘series explores the relationship between the images being depicted and the source of the medium with which they are drawn’. Each drawing becomes a diagram of the though process itself and in essence a self-reflective sigil of processed pattern.

Both artists, to some extent, rely on the human algorithm and internal if/then statements to build their complex drawings and have a strong, if unintentional, allegiance to the kind of art made by computational artists and their algorithms.

For more procedural drawings see this post. Also related is Human Robots & Space filling Emotions.