Jihee Kim (Section D)– LookingOutwards-06

Forms (excerpt) from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Forms is a computational project that is a collaboration between Memo Akten and Quayola, both who are visual/media artists. From March to September of 2012, Forms was a part of the In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. The project reflects restricted randomness that leads to a dynamic, organic animation of movements.

The project explores interaction between the human body and forces in movements, concentrating on athletes who exert significant forces. It is interesting how through abstract visual elements, the authors portray relationships between the human and its environment, such as balance, force, and beauty. The video below compares the software-generated art and the subject(athletes) that was studied.

Forms (process) from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

In the initial stages of the project, the artists created a setting that responds to the dynamic movements of the human body, acquired data on the athletes and ran physics-based simulations. This beginning stage is when they came across random yet predicted animations using 3D Studio Max and custom-made software. Although the animation may seem to be following the athlete’s motions strictly and simply depicting his/her movements, a sense of randomness exists in that the artists of the project focused more on what they see. If the hands of the person is being the attractor point, the authors augmented that part of the body more than other ones and created a flowing, enticing, random project. The end product is a combination of multiple layers that each focuses on different powers and actions of various parts of the athlete’s body.

It is intriguing how Memo Akten and Quayola were able to depict natural activities through random, anthropogenic elements and engage the audience through different senses. Their concentration on collisions between nature and “data dramatizations” as artists successfully manifest itself in the project.

More information can be found on the artists’ websites:

Memo Akten

Quayola