Hexadron – Michael Hansmeyer

Back in early 2009 Greg Smith dropped Dataisnature a line with an invitation to curate an issue of Vague Terrain – the web journal of digital arts he launched in collaboration with Neil Wiernik back in fall 2005. Being a long time fan of both Vague Terrain and Greg’s personal online writing project Serial Consign, I leapt at the chance and decided to work with a topic dear to the heart of dataisnature. One of the central themes over the past 5 years of this weblog is the use of code by artists to create biological simulations, algorithmic botany and computational ecosystems. Drawing on some of my favourite artists working within this paradigm, and featured on this blog, the idea of VT:14 Biomorph came into being. 10 Artists/writers/architects were invited to submit work.

Some keywords and ideas to reflect upon were: Morphogenesis, Algorithmic Botany, Emergence, Genetic Algorithms, Cellular Automata, L-systems, Bacterial Aesthetics, Biomineralisation, Autogenesis, Self-generation; Cellular Division, Cosmobiotechnics, Biomimicry and DNA sequences.

VT14 showcases the work of Kat Masback, Daniel Widrig, Biothing, Robert Hodgin, Emma McNally, Jon McCabe, Michael Hansmeyer, Wilfred Hou Je Bek, David Lu and Marc Fornes. You will find Cosmobiotechnic drawings and biochemical schemas, form-finding, algorithmic and emergent architecture, work inspired by Alan Turing and Ernst Haeckle, and a conjectural piece of Bacteriopoetics to boot.

Vague Terrain 14: Biomorph can be viewed here.

Oscillating between being a single creature and a democratic swarm the lowly but incredible slime mold can self-organize itself into a multitude of ultra-aesthetic globular geometries.

Myxomycetes Flickr set explores the non-linear dynamics of these gooey heterotrophs, revealing molecular chain formations, jellyfied glyphs, and protean branching structures. The latter mold has an impressive claim to fame. Physarum Polycephalum, also known as ‘the many headed slime’ can navigate a maze to find its own food.

‘Slime molds are really groups of tiny amoeba which are normally sliding around the forest floor individually. Occasionally they will coalesce into a larger blob. There is no central commander telling the individual cells when to come together or disperse. Like ants, they use pheromone trails. The individual cells release pheromones based on their assessment of the conditions. Using a type of chemical democracy, when the pheromone trail gets intense enough the slime mold cells pile together to form a larger being.’

Click here to read more about how the slime mold can solve a maze.

Recently Physarum Polycephalum also courted some fame in the robotics world by being able to ‘control’ a simple six-legged robot. Sensing the slime’s chemical reaction to light the ‘slimebot’ crawled away from light sources, becoming a ‘mechanical embodiment’ of the mould’s intentions.

Green Desert – Bernhard Edmaie

Microblogged: Selected Tweets, during June 2008, from my Twitter stream:

For non-standard notation aficionados – staves and musical maps at Strangetractor.

Circuit board aesthetics – recent work from Mark Wilson, plus an in-depth interview with the artist at Geoform.

Earth morphologies – beautiful photographs by Bernhard Edmaie.

‘Broken lines of thought, false statements & fictional scenarios’ – thoughtful work by Jørgen Lello & Tobias Arnell.

Geodesic Outposts – the work of Will Yackulic, plus interview at Libbysniche.

‘Catching up with the temporal horizon’ & other very small code-based artworks (Microcodes) – Pall Thayer.

Decryptopattern, Cymatic experiments by Daisuke Ishida & Noriko Yamaguchi.

The freehand suburbs of Subdivisionville – work from Ross Racine.

Dense fractures, rhizomes, filaments & structures – 2009 Flickrs from ‘I Aint An Artist.’

Carvalhais is collating his readings on Rudy Rucker, Steven Wolfram, Cellular Automata, Universal Computation, & Computation philosophy.

Worlds first Digital Still Camera (1975) at Wired. It took 23 seconds to record a 100 line image to tape.

Mmmm this is what fresh data should sound like – Twypewriter, a Twitter typewriter.

Through 150 Dry Wellbores – Torgeir Husevaag

Galaxies forming along filaments – The sculptural work of Tomas Saraceno.

Pixillation modulations – perceptual grids made in Processing by Xosé Salgado.

A myriad of visualisations of randomness at Randomwalk.

Karl Kliem’s synaesthetic visuals for Trioon by Alvo Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Map Projects by Torgeir Husevaag. Works informed by the great meta-mappers Borges and Calvino.

Whimsical schematics from Casanieva on Flickr.

Microgravitorial water droplet from inside the International Space Station.

Brilliant Noise by Semiconductor. Solar winds of radio wave frequencies.

Aeolian earth processing. La morfología de las dunas.

Pointillist imitations by Lego Artbot from Nils Völker.

Utopia – Heike Weber

Much of Heike Weber’s work deals with multiform decoration brought about by a considered repetition of patterns, motifs and lines. In the Utopia installation a wall covered mass of undulating lines, in close proximity, create the illusion of mountainous landscapes and isogramic topologies.

Heike’s Kilim series of paintings use either acrylic paint or silicon to map out ornate figures and patterns. In the acrylic versions gravity is allowed to play its role in the creation process creating vertical drips which provide a counterpoint to more gestural marks.

Spotted at Moonriver

Butterfly in the Brain – Suzanne Anker

Suzanne Anker’s work deals with biological, morphological and genetic themes. Works like Codex Genome and Zoosemiotics invoke the idea of a universal biological language, in the latter chromosome shaped glyphs form a secret script.

Utilising bilateral symmetry, her Butterfly in the Brain installation and rapid-prototyped Rorschach Series address the perennial fascination in recognising animals, faces, insects and apparitions, as well as fetishes and phobias, out of apparently innocuous organic mirrored shapes.

Geom.III – Re:void

Re:void’s ‘Geom’ Flickr set applies translucent natural colours to create cubist-like extrusions where segments float along 3 dimension paths. According to Re:void ‘The output of a brush is based on mouse-gestures & random parameters’ Colours are taken from pictures, in conjunction with pre-defined pallets.’

1chord_&_a_fib’s ‘Nonsense Info Graphics’ set visualises groups of imagined datasets, again in considered colours. Various graphical symbols are combined with abstract geometries. The hieroglyphics on each appear to denote data from the future or the past, or perhaps the studies of an alien community trying to contact us form a distant solar system.

Cedison’s ‘Pleat Technique’ set contains some interesting origami structures – curious organic shell-like objects and Aztec temple architectures arise from pleat processing.

Richard Heeks photographs of bubbles during the moment of bursting reveal the hidden explosions of soapy water when the iridescent elastic sheet of surface tension gives in to external air turbulence.

Spomenik – Jan Kempenaer

The recent trend in constructing imaginary buildings using photo-realistic montage techniques begged Dataisnature to ask whether the structures in Jan Kempenaer’s photographs of Yugoslavian Communist monuments were actually real at first. His Spomenik (literally ‘monument’) series presents, what seems like, alien architectures, large scale concrete wildstyle extrusions, solidified archigramesque pods and geometric military forts. All appear outlandish in their forgotten and dilapidate state. Disconnected from time, they could all be contenders for the setting of conjectural film version of Borge’s elliptical story ‘The Circular Ruins’.

Related:
Fr̩d̩ric Chaubin РCosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

Stereo.types – Ebon Heath

Brooklyn based Ebon Heath creates complex expressive typographic sculptures which he calls Stereo.types. His work echoes the free-form letter play of early decadent poets, such as Guillaume Apollinaire, the abstract dynamics of Islamic Calligraphy, and more recently interactive web-based typographic toys. Rather than sit on the flat plane, Ebon’s messages extrude into complex crystals with radial morphologies. Other works in the series take the form of mobiles where individual letters continuously move into new configurations. These works allude to an non-linear semantic structures, where forms of messages isomorphically represent shape-shifting meanings and interpretations.

Somethings Will Perish – Noella Allen

Evoking microscopic cellular biological processes such as cell division, destruction and regeneration are Neolla Allen’s process drawings which employ watercolours mixed with graphite on Mylar. Topographies of genetic transformation, DNA replication, mitosis and cellular tessellations are insinuated through the paths of watercolour dispersion. Noella also points to the inherent pattern recognition aspect to these works when viewed from a distance. For that viewpoint the sinuous forms coagulate into fossils, phantasmagoria and cannibalistic creatures.

Spotted at Moonriver.

Mayn River, Siberia – Landsat7

Nasa’s Earthasart has a selection of stunning images of the Earth’s surface taken by the Landsat 7 & Terra ssatellites the later obtains pictures via its on-board ASTER remote sensor (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer).

Both satellites scan the entire earth’s surface via a heliosynchronous orbit, an orbit that is calculated to provide a consistent illumination angle. This property is required since the satellites take remote readings via a range of bands of the electromagnetic spectrum including thermal infra-red light. They require the sun to be in consistent positions relative to the earth while tracking its surface to take accurate readings.

Not surprisingly this collection of images reveals our favourite sets of archetypal process pattern formations, geological ‘computations’ that seem familiar at any scale – from microscopic to the macroscopic.

The pictures more than hint at a possibility of Universal Computation, (that the Universe is running a giant computer program), as advocated by the likes of Stephen Wolfram & Rudy Rucker. Cellular Automata and other generative-like structures make appearances in sand dune patterns, Diffusion Aggregations systems arise to create gigantic earthworks, dendritic figures arise from river deltas. At other moments these images appear to have been taken from a atlas of pathology. These connections and similarities have been mentioned many times at this blog before, as readers will know.

Sometimes more Euclidean formats take shape. The utilitarian aspects of farming & habitation creates subdivisioning patterns like this one in Northern Kazakhstan. Subdivisioning and recursive patterns created through the process of social organisationn and agriculture have been examined in detail by enthomathamatician Ron Eglash’s in his well-known book ‘African Fractals’. Here is a related TED page including a link to a video of Ron talking about his studies.