Emily Zhou – Looking Outwards – 06

Mark Wilson is a digital artist, painter, and printmaker who began exploring random computational art in 1980. He started on a microcomputer, learning programming in order to create artwork. He essentially writes software that uses calculated repetition to construct intricate layers.

I admire the complexity of his work, and the effectiveness of the algorithm to generate elaborate pieces without becoming overly messy and disorderly. I am fascinated by the way he reproduces a similar style throughout his work, and the implications of this in the program.

Though left unspecified, Wilson leaves certain elements to be randomly chosen by the machine while carefully curating others. I would assume he makes decisions about scale and arrangement, which elements of patterning and colour dependent on random.

Wilson has paintings dating back to 1973 that inspired his digital style that continues to develop in the present year through computation.