LookingOutwards – 02

Looking at Cytoplasmic Playgrounds (2012) by Markos Kay I admire how abstract the images of his collection are while still conveying the motion of the idea he’s trying to show, which is protein interactions. The movement within this collection of drawings brings life to abstracted molecular chemistry and the complexities of detail, depth, and fullness in the images are exciting to explore. The consistently, simple beige backgrounds throughout the collection also prevent the series from becoming too unrecognizable and random. While this image is computer generated, the artist, Kay, adds his own creativity in putting in the way chemical reactions are represented: what colors are used, what items to prioritize, and what movements to convey. The algorithm that Kay used to generate these looks very complicated. I think he does use the random function within bounds to generate the positions of items, especially the points in the clusters. The ‘movement’ in the drawings tends to appear to have a center, indicating that the algorithm might use vectors attracted to centers to give the appearance of centripetal movement.