Xu Xu – Looking Outwards – 11

For this week’s looking outwards, I decided to focus on LIA, an Austrian software and net artist. Her primary working medium is code, which consists of translating a concept into a formal written structure that then can be used to create a “machine” that generates real-time multimedia outputs. Her works can be regarded as a conversation between the human and the machine.

I chose to focus on one of her projects called Fluctus, which is a generative application that was displayed by Dong Gallery Taipei. Most of LIA’s works is not about creating an object, and her computational art exists beyond the material flow of things. Her works are enacted to give rise to objects: the art are temporarily and fleetingly created, they are brought to the canvas just to quickly disappear, leaving nothing but impressions in the memory of the viewer. Art is flow, process, concept, but more so an event. Art is brought alive through computation.

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What I admire about LIA’s Fluctus is that the work often seem to display organic traits, and the unfolding of forms leaves behind traces that builds up morphological processes of its computational core, while expressing its wholeness. The abstract and alien forms created are mesmerizing, the patterns almost seem ornamental. One would be intrigued by this artwork while passing by it on the streets, and stand for a while beside it to study its movements and developments throughout time.