Imposters is a short play by Mark Chrisler about pioneering computer scientist and codebreaker, Alan Turing. Turing helped develop the first computers and an empirical test (the Turing Test) for artificial intelligence and other minds. He was also a homosexual and was imprisoned, interrogated, and chemically castrated by his government. He later committed suicide.
The play which consists of a strange, tense, and uncanny interrogation was written utilizing two chatterboxes ( simple conversation robots from the 1970s) to create the dialogue. The play itself is repetitive and the dialogue is often rudimentary with frequent non-sequiturs, but also can be eerily meaningful, even ominous.
Having seen the play live it is a strange event to fully describe. You begin to lose any sense of identity in either character, there’s also a feeling of growing unease throughout, even when the dialogue repeats and shifts in humorous ways. My understanding of the chatterboxes is that, similar to AIM chat bots, they were programs to understand a limited amount of inputs and have prepared responses to simulate conversation. One of the machines was programed to always reply with a question when it didn’t recognize an input, the other was programed to shift the conversation to a topic to which it could respond.
Participatory art installation at The Architecture of Francis Kere: Building for Community at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Participatory art is a form of analog art that exploits the aggregate power of the public to create a work of art. In a way, participatory art is form of generative art; though, rather than relying on a digital algorithm, it is predicated on a set of physical constraints and rules and the autonomy of the participants. Indeed, good participatory art involves a clear framework or set of physical parameters that participants operate within, together, to ultimately generate an unexpected, authentic piece of art. The physical medium acts as the rule set; the participants act as the autonomous motors.
Wall piece at the Francis Kere exhibit talking about the primary philosophy behind Kere’s work: participation.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to visit an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art titled The Architecture of Francis Kere: Building for Community. Francis Kere is a German-trained architect from a small town in Burkina Faso (West Africa) called Gando. During his youth, he was the only child to be given the opportunity to leave his village to become educated. Since his training in Germany, he has committed his career to reinvesting his architectural knowledge into his home town of Gando. By including the community in the design and construction process, he is empowering them with the knowledge, skills, and optimism to modify their built environment and create more livable spaces for themselves.
Detail view looking through the cellulated structure of the piece.
Part of Kere’s exhibit included a participatory art piece used to demonstrate the power of participation and collaboration in the creation of art and architecture. The piece was predicated on a simple framework consisting of plastic straws and a plastic cellulated wall structure. Participants were able to grab a straw from a bucket and stick it into the cellulated structure. They were able to select the color of their choice, the location of their straw in the wall, as well as the way in which their straw met the structure. The beauty to this system is that the basic parameters (i.e. the physical properties of the straws and the physical properties of the wall) do not lead to singular results. The straws can be bent or twisted or formed into loops, straws can be combined to form larger straws, colors can be clustered or patterned, straws can pass entirely through the structure and appear on both sides. Each of these conditions was evident in the piece when I visited it, and more conditions were continuing to be developed by participants while I was there. In the end, this type of participatory art leads to unique, unexpected results that are dependent on both a set of base constraints as well as the participants’ interpretation and creativity.
Graham Wakefield is a computational generative artist. He is not only an artist, but also a computer music composer and a software developer. It was interesting that he creates the whole new element(artwork) through ‘automatic algorithm’. One of his best known project ‘Artificial Nature’ series greets people to interact with an artwork digitally. Wakefield worked as a composer and artist Haru Ji participated in 3D sculptures.
He was inspired from the experiences of his childhood such as playing with his fingers in the river, path of marching insects, and so on. He also focused on natural patterns like gene structure, independent cell growth, metabolism and genetic mutation. This natural patterns are not recorded like video. All the works are programmed, so they actually show different outcomes depending on the environment. They deeply researched these natural phenomena, and tried to apply by programming as much as possible. I really admire that he tried to implement natural factors using “unnatural” factors by programming natural phenomena in detail, and moreover inviting visitors to interact with artworks.
Artificial Nature: Time of Doubles (Graham Wakefield/ Haru Ji)
Light Sculpture of Flames is an art installation in Pace Gallery’s teamLab location in Menlo Park, CA. When I visited this gallery, this was the first piece that I saw and it was truly breathtaking. The teamLab artists created an installation using light bulbs organized in a gridded cube pattern, set to flash using an algorithm to mimic the movements of fire. The algorithm makes lightbulb clusters fire at a certain time, each with assigned hue and brightness. This setup adds a new depth to capturing the essence of fire, through the use of art. In 2D art, one can express the warmth of a fire, but can’t quite express the liveliness and volume. In 3D sculpture, one can express the volume of the fire better, but can’t express its movement or its internal workings. For Light Sculpture of Flames, the artists chose this 3D yet see-through light show for the sake of getting a sense of the fire’s volume while also being able to see its inner core. This ‘3D pointillism’ adds more depth to the perception of the fire, as the viewer is able to perceive the lively movements of the fire while also seeing its brighter internal layers contrasted with its dark red outer layers.
Link to the piece:
https://www.team-lab.net/works/light_sculpture_of_flames/
“Péle-Méle” was a visiting installation exhibition at the Wood Street Galleries here in Pittsburgh by the French Artist, Olivier Ratsi.
The project is a projection installation that plays with lines and depth to continue the viewer’s eye line into the space. At first the image appears as a normal box shape but then as you stand still the boxes peel away, moving farther into the space and revealing more shapes, making you feel like you’re moving through a tunnel, although you are standing still. The installation is paired with music with a deep resonance, making the viewer feel as if they are entering another dimension or as some have described a “wormhole”.
What I admire about this piece is the strength in the simplicity. It’s a simple algorithm design, just boxes that start wide and get smaller and multiply…but it’s a really effective design that evokes a lot of emotional resonance.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a project by Robert Hodgin done in 2010 that like the title suggests addresses a disorder in which the affected are concerned about a physical feature that they have. The project uses a Kinect sensor (motion sensing input device) to record people’s moving bodies and instantaneously turn that into a display of exaggerated body parts. Kinect apps are written in C++, C#, or Visual Basic NET. The artist uses algorithms to push surfaces to make the user change shape. One intentional decision made was to blur the depth map that resulted in a smoother, more consistent surface.
People can’t help taking their hands up to touch their newly discovered bloated faces. I never knew about this kind of disorder before and this project has brought awareness to it in the best way possible. It allows us to experience the symptoms in a realistic way. It inspires me because it could be used to raise awareness for other disorders like synesthesia (which I have always wanted to experience). It could also promote better understanding of symptoms for doctors treating the disorders.
Google’s DeepDream program, initially created to identify patterns in images with the goal of classifying them, is a generative art program that transforms normal images into surrealist art. The algorithm learns patterns in images and repeats them in order to create psychedelic, dream-like art. Google uses a “convolutional neural network” in this program, which is an artificial neural network based on the animal visual cortex. Because the program was developed by a company rather than an individual artist, no one artist’s “artistic sensibilities” really manifest in their algorithm; however, Google has a website that allows others to upload their own images and run them through the algorithm (and allows for varying degrees of distortion) which lets the user to bring their own artistic sensibilities. I find this particularly inspiring, as it isn’t just one person creating art, but an entire network of people.
It was released in July 2015.
Louise Naunton Morgan is a generational artists who creates traditional art pieces by imitating the algorithms by which printers print images. As a member of an ongoing project called “The Human Printer,” Morgan has become an expert at painstakingly transferring images by hand in order to create quasi-impressionistic pieces that juxtapose digital art with traditional methods.
The juxtaposition of digital creation with traditional methods of art presents an interesting dialogue on the transition society is making from “old media” to “new media,” and is an example of the fluidity with which one can incorporate both methods of creation into producing artwork.
In addition, The Human Printer project has three sections focused on different aspects of printing, such as tonal contrast, mass reproduction, and scale and distance. One can even order prints of particular images from the project. This interactivity with the audience allows the project to resonate more personally, and thus have greater artistic meaning.
Printing Porcelain In 3d By Nervous Systems By Nervous System – 01 June 2016
Nervous studio uses generative design inspired by natural phenomena and digital fabrication to make unique art, jewelry and housewares (nervous system inc, 2016).
The process of fabricating a two layered porcelain cup whose outer layer is an organic cellular composition akin to ‘frozen foam of bubbles’ is described on the studio website. The cup is 3D printed with a method called Porcelite using Stereolithography (SLA) which differs from the more common extrusion based or powder 3D ceramic printing. In addition to intricacy and aesthetic appeal, the double skin with air spaces insulates from hot liquids contained in the cup.
The source algorithms are not described on the website. Nevertheless, the allusion to frozen foam of bubbles suggests random ellipses constrained both by minimum and maximum size and spacing.
The suggested algorithm reflects the ethos of Nervous System design studios’ two artistic founders. Generative design captures organic patterns in a way that is impossible using any other means. I always thought of art as incompatible with the rigidity of mathematical formulae. This project dispels that misconception.
Bibliography
nervous system inc. (2016). about us. Retrieved 9 8, 2016, from nervous system: http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/about_us.php
nervous system inc. (2016). printing porcelain in 3D. Retrieved 9 8, 2016, from nervous system: http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=7341
The Generative Artist I chose for this week’s Looking Outwards assignment is Mario Klingemann. Mario Klingmann is stationed in Munich, Germany, and describes himself as and “Artist, Coder, Data Collector, Archivist, Speaker and Obsessive Compulsive Orderer” according to his twitter page. One project that I liked in particular from him was his “Pinuptic Curve” series, where he creates Pinup photos of women purely out of ellipses. The full series can be found here.
What I admire about this project (aside from being a fan of pinup photos) is that he manages to capture the expression and form of a pinup photo with the single usage of a primitive shape: the ellipse. The images themselves are fairly complex. He created the series in 2011. I can imagine that describing himself as an “Obessesive Compulsive Orderer” has some backing, as the images for this project are incredibly precise in what they are trying to represent. There is very deliberate usage of the ellipses to create the models of the women in the pinups.
Mario uses a self made tool known as ScribblerToo, and Flash for his works.
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http://roberthodgin.com/portfolio/work/body-dysmorphia/
