Christine Chen- Looking Outwards-02

Above is Austrian artist LIA’s work, Weaving, that was created in 2018
Source: https://vimeo.com/279291848

After looking at a range of various generative art, I found Austrian artist LIA’s work, Weaving, most fascinating and inspirational. LIA started producing art with softwares and algorithms as early as 1995 and is considered as one of the first developers of the field. She translates concepts into codes which she uses as “machines” to generate multimedia outputs, which are then used to generate art. In her piece Weaving, LIA was inspired by the use of punch card in the Jacquard mechanism that was used to record information in the past to efficiently weave complex patterns for textiles. LIA developed the software to reflect the method of the Jacquard mechanism to develop “digital textiles.”

What interests me most about this piece is how simultaneously different and alike the Jacquard mechanism and LIA’s method of creating the piece is. Both translates aesthetic patterns into codes, yet the output of one is physical while the other one is digital. It is as if one is a newer version of the other. Through this piece, LIA combined traditional art with today’s computer generated algorithms to create a breakthrough of both sides.