Artworks Data Table

Memories of the Memory Stairs: the artworks depicted in these images and videos were originally part of a fully immersive digital “virtual reality” experience called The Memory Stairs. The idea of The Memory Stairs was to have a participant, via a head mounted display, immersive 3D sound, and scents released into the space, visit a number of chronologically ordered life memories, from before birth to near death that I designed. As a virtual environment experience it was somewhat successful, but very painstaking to do, and not many people were able to experience it because of the complexities of setting up the full system. In looking for a better way to share the essence of The Memory Stairs with more people, I came up with the concept of incorporating videos taken of the original memories and rear projecting them onto a screen. However, I still wanted the immersive, embracing effect of the virtual reality version, so I made a rig to hold three 5 x 10 foot silk panels which were folded in slightly so that the visitor could feel they were encompassed in a very unique and ethereal space. With the sound played, and wind from a fan used to gently blow the silk panels, a subtle liveliness was brought to the images. Many participants found the analogue nature of this experience to be more evocative than the fully digital version.

2004 Statement: Skipper’s Book is a tribute to my older sister illustrating my memories of her early years when we lived in Germany after the war. There are words, but no structured narrative as I wanted to convey the way I, as a baby and small toddler with little command of language, experienced this older, wonderful person, who was often lonely, lost and yet full of childish wonder. Each page represents emotions and events occurring during 6 months in 1950, starting with June. It can be viewed as sequential pages on a computer monitor or printed as a small folder accordion-style booklet

To evolve, visual thinking must take advantage of modern technological means of image generation, while keeping the best of what has gone before, thereby creating a truly unique visual vocabulary for our times.

For the last decade, Jacquelyn Martino has focused her artistic practice on the design of a rule-based computational language to generate works in the visual design language of her evolving style. Travel Stones is an installation that applies this computational language to the
creation of a collection of cultural artifacts from a fictitious ancient culture. Martino makes use of her rule system to generate a series of realistic cultural artifacts made plausible by the combination of their consistent design language and their grounding in a number of historical references. In the installation, the viewer reads a museum-style exhibition text detailing the origins of the artifacts. The imagined culture derives from an ancient people who carry their travel stones – much as house keys – as a way to access their home center, which is ultimately more spiritual than physical. The text leads the viewer to believe that the four accompanying paintings document a first-hand exposure to the stones by someone external to the culture. Passed from generation to generation, the stones further serve as resonant objects in the tracing of the people’s history. Prompted by the drawings on the stones, the ancients recount tales of their origins to the next generations as well as to those they meet in travel. Through their stories, they maintain their sense of identity and place while simultaneously transferring fragments of their culture to others. In this piece, the enabling algorithmic production system is integral to Martino’s process, but not particularly apparent to the viewer. The visual separation of high-tech process from pseudo-historic product calls into question any easy distinction between technology and culture in our own place and time.

This artwork is an interactive art website. The given link is no longer active.

By capturing the trace of meteors falling toward the Earth, the interactive sculpture Echos of Alakiwohoch reminds us of our celestial origins and the mutability of life our natal planet.

Face of City is a data visualization project portraying emotions in cities. Th e representative emotions of a city are selected through the thorough analysis of social media posts within a particular area. Th en these emotions are visualized through constantly changing ambiguous facial expressions. Th is exhibition features the facial expressions of Seoul and Bangkok, based on respective analysis results on the same social media keywords.

Beyond the Gravity is a work that lays its foundation in ‘Art + Technology Play’ platform, which means the combination of ‘art’ and ‘digital technology.’ The work materialized a new form of art by combining sound art and media art. It employed the technique of projection mapping and using the fundamental principles of light, which expanded the limit of expression in spatial terms. At the same time, the work enables audience who experience the work to imagine unreal conditions such as zero gravity by transforming the existing space into a new visual space and making an illusion as one exists as a being floating in the vast universe. Through the visual effect that is within the augmented virtual space created by projection mapping, audiences of the work go through a confusing experience and are dazzled by such experience. In other word, the illusion experienced within the work seemingly exists by a cognitional misjudgment while it does not exist in reality. Audiences are unable to fix their vision and experience fragmentary perception. Surrounded by light, their senses make mistakes, leading them to recognize the nonexistent phenomenon as reality.

Under such context, Beyond the Gravity presents an extended space in a virtual form. The work realizes it by systemic expansion and amplification of light, which is materialized through physical partitions that are used as screens for projection. In the space created by the work, the flickering lights follow a certain rhythm, appearing as if they are traces of stars in the universe or radioactive particles floating in the atmosphere. While they are moving in a very delicate manner, the fine particles interact with sound and represent the dramatic emotion in the work.

Light Space The Stone proposes a new form of Digital Media Installation Work which has a strong basis in modern Digital Technology, but is inspired by Korean traditional views of nature. It considers nature not merely by its environmental importance but also questions how to create a harmony between human-made Digital Media and ecological needs. The work has bumpy shapes just like rock surfaces and electronic circuits on its surface that change lighting when the surrounding brightness changes. Each electronic circuit has CdS Cell censoring the brightness, transistor and LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). Each pixel is 2cm by 2cm; a square shaped pixel of two thousand is placed along the surface of the art work. This three-dimensional form of work is an attempt to pull away from a typical form of LED display used before, and to create visual enjoyment and explore the potential of digital sculptures. This work reveals its form by the element of light. Generally light is used to gleam through the texts or images to convey a message or to light the space as a lighting device. In contrast, the lighting of each pixel changes according to the change in lighting surrounding them. The light becomes an element of the sculpture.

I use nature as an interactive medium and agent to control my instal­lations. My projects look for a new relationship among nature, art, and technology. How we use technology to interact with nature is a subject of great concern to me. In my work, I allow nature to literally control my installations, and by looking at the visualization of the movement of natural surroundings, viewers have an opportunity to achieve a closer connection with nature.

One rainy day, while watching the water flowing endlessly down the window, I thought how interesting it would be to express the move­ment and the shape of the water flowing past with light. The result is this interactive installation. When viewers approach the work, water flows over light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and the lights come on when the water touches an LED. The intensity of the LEDs is regulated by the quantity of water running over them. In addition, viewers can par­ticipate by sprinkling water on the surface of the installation, which then turns on the lights.

This work represents memories of childhood. A lollipop is one of the world’s most be loved snacks. Although it is common to normal people, a lollipop is not an affordable snack to poor children. This work expresses an imaginary lollipop by a user’s drawing. The candy drawing is printed on a paper having a message on its backside. The message represents memories of childhood. The printer uses fragrance inks to print out an origami with a lollipop shape. The audience carries on art works which have a fragrance and lollipop shape. This is a fake lollipop, however it may represent a hope for everyone.

Jamie Allen is interested in technologies that suggest ways of reinventing traditional relationships to art and performance. His work in digital media, music, performance, and public art seeks to create physical relationships between people and media.
In this work, a bicycle generator powers a water pump and lighting system for a plantation of hy-droponically grown, edible plants. The plants provide nourishment for the biker, and this a sealed micro-ecosystem asks: What are the limits of human “sustainability”?

My work is based on the potential that technology offers artists to express imagination and ideas. I am interested in how emotion, fantasy, realism, and detail can all be composited together with the use of 3D and 2D software tools to compose compelling works of art.

I derive my inspiration from environments (urban or natural). I feel observation of characteristics and details of environments reveal more about the inhabitants than the inhabitants themselves. There is a language of inanimate details available and translatable to the astute observer that conveys a most beguiling force of life and energy

Darkcity is a member of a body of images formerly published in Computer Arts Magazine. It is a study of how 3D and 2D computer tools can represent the formal concerns of fine art such as color, perspective, depth, and detail to create an emotionally evocative atmosphere. This image was inspired by an affinity for, yet wariness of, certain large northern cities.

My works are experiments with manipulating digital photographs. The primary software used is Adobe Photoshop and, sometimes, Newtek Lightwave 30.

Where are we? Where have we been? Location shapes who we are, how we think, and what we do. This knowledge forms a collective memory of “place.” All of us have a history of places: memories of a childhood home or neighborhood, the schools we attended, summer vacations, where we live and work. Some places are personal. Some are public. Through my work, some are shared. This is the starting point of the two series of digital prints: Drawing Lessons and Locations. I combine architectural and/or geographic imagery, scanned objects, and drawings referencing specific locations. I do not intend to suggest cause-and-effect relationships between these elements, or a clichéd reminiscence, but rather to create a layered spatial matrix, a controlled displacement of space, that presents places of personal or public significance and the possibility of their relationship to creative behavior.

Creating the Locations series required the use of both PC and Macintosh operating systems. Geographic data were located on the Internet and downloaded. ArcView, a software program for translating statistical data into visual form, was used to build terrain models of landscapes. These were exported into Photoshop, combined with scanned objects and small drawings, and manipulated further. The finished artworks form limited editions of archival prints that represent a synthesis of science and art.

I have called this picture Blue Bowls for no better reason than it’s blue and because of the bowl-like forms. I started out wanting to do something in vivid greens and yellows. I have been making reliefs in cardboard, painting them, photographing them from odd angles, and recreating them digitally. I felt I should go easy on the tan color of the raw cardboard. In the end, I found myself using these dominant blues.

Before it is anything else, this is a drawing, where the flow of the line and the rhythm of the design matter most. For some time (14 years), I have been working with paint programs and physical paint. By making drawing dominant, keeping it as the foreground layer, using the line like a language, I can play around with other shifts and contrasts. The drawn motif is the constant, whether drawn with brio, on a Wacom tablet, or photographed as a brush-mark. You can convey quite a lot in the character of a line. It’s visual and direct, a good way to keep on top of the technology.

While experimenting with the transparent floaters on Painter 5, the artist discovered that sometimes a few variations in brush behavior are enough to lift the space and give it the right luminosity. Digital painting provides a depth and clarity that is impossible to achieve with oil paint.

This work also includes some real-life grit, from backyard photographs of pots and toy guns.

“Filament,” a term that refers to thread-like forms in astronomy, botany, biology, and incandescent light bulbs, is a useful concept for a series of works that uses filigree patterns, hinting at shifts of scale between plant forms, distant galaxies, and painted marks. It is one way of approaching the question of how “nature” might be visualized with the power of digital tools. The Filament series alludes to the difference between liquid threads of paint spread by the brush and the filigree patterns of digital drawing, the play between physical material and the electronic image. It represents my continuing project of integrating drawing, painting, and photography into a digital process, a preoccupation addressed in my book Painting the Digital River: How an Artist Learned to Love the Computer (Prentice Hall 2006). The series began as a commission from the London Print Studio to produce four large-scale prints. Beginning with photographed drawings and watercolours, which were re-assembled digitally, the series developed a format where graffiti, folk motifs, botanical illustration, and rapid drawing were juxtaposed. In some pieces, brushes and paints are presented in the role of motifs.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about drawing, and some of these ideas are becoming part of the work I make. I draw the same motif (a tree, a chair) switching between a brush and a Wacom tablet, and play around with the differences. For someone like me, who has both a painting studio and a digital studio, drawing with line is one of the options that bridge the gap between media. I still don’t know the right term to use, because though I usually end up with a giclée iris print, I do not feel I am a digital printmaker, a computer artist, or a digital painter. If I identify this work as “drawing,” and my larger paintings, which use similar techniques, as “drawn paintings,” then I am getting closer. What excites me is the continuing convergence between painting, photography, and the digital. The processes, techniques, and, of course, software can be so rich and surprising I sometimes feel like standing back and letting the pictures make themselves without any interference from me.

I have been using prefabricated components, sections of cardboard that I paint and build into temporary constructions before photographing. When I reassemble these drawings, which are overlaid with digital drawing, I may introduce quite arbitrarily an unrelated photo, a street scene. This may hold the attention and subordinate the rest of the picture, but it can also lift the mood of a picture and activate latent contrasts.

Drawn Trees reflects on the interplay between the drawn and painted motif, which is more or less repeated, not by copy and paste but by my autopilot memory. Gouache drawings, trees painted on boxes, are photographed, and pattern brush drawings (sampled from the gouache) all coalesce in the same space.

“F-G and the Iron Clocks of Film” was a by-product of some research I was doing at Kingston University for an exhibition last June entitled “Silent Motion.” This exhibition juxtaposes Muybridge’s photo sequences of the 1880s with present-day digital work. Muybridge came from Kingston, near London, and spent his last years there. Contraptions such as his “zoopraxiscope,” or the Friese-Greene camera-projectors in this picture, represent pioneering hardware – some would say extinct media – that hold iconic status for artists working to come to terms with the hybrid forms of digital art. In 1889, William Friese-Greene made a film in Hyde Park; the film was stereoscopic, made of paper, and looks like a Seurat painting. I photographed these cameras in Kingston Museum. Damaged by fire 100 years ago, they were salvaged from an Islington. factory and given to the museum in 1974. They also appear reproduced in the 1948 biography by Ray Allister – a pseudonym for Muriel Forth. By the time I photographed the cameras, the reels had been transposed.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about drawing, and some of these ideas are becoming part of the work I make. I draw the same motif (a tree, a chair) switching between a brush and a Wacom tablet, and play around with the differences. For someone like me, who has both a painting studio and a digital studio, drawing with line is one of the options that bridge the gap between media. I still don’t know the right term to use, because though I usually end up with a giclée iris print, I do not feel I am a digital printmaker, a computer artist, or a digital painter. If I identify this work as “drawing,” and my larger paintings, which use similar techniques, as “drawn paintings,” then I am getting closer. What excites me is the continuing convergence between painting, photography, and the digital. The processes, techniques, and, of course, software can be so rich and surprising I sometimes feel like standing back and letting the pictures make themselves without any interference from me.

I have been using prefabricated components, sections of cardboard that I paint and build into temporary constructions before photographing. When I reassemble these drawings, which are overlaid with digital drawing, I may introduce quite arbitrarily an unrelated photo, a street scene. This may hold the attention and subordinate the rest of the picture, but it can also lift the mood of a picture and activate latent contrasts.

Figures in a Landscape is the title of a picture that used a much larger (12 feet x 10 feet) initial study as a ground, which consisted of motifs developed from small doodles, derived from an evening spent at a flower-arranging demonstration (I was the only male there, but got through my embarrassment by realising the dandified geometry/botany had possibilities for the digital artist). I tried several ways to resolve this in its digital stage, but one night I recalled that I never quite made proper use of one of the hundreds of photos I had recently taken in Japan. The couples with the umbrella are in Kyoto, and there could be some small affinity between the wetness of the paint and the rain.

In our London back garden, we are lucky each summer to have two resident frogs. I tried this image out on a variety of backgrounds before settling on this one, which I think of as having a slight art nouveau feel to it. Some of the physical drawing is done with sticks in both left and right hands, and some of the digital drawing is done in vector format, so there are several contrasting methods at work. What fascinates me about some images is what they tell you about the position of the observer, and in this case the intimate overhead view of the frog is combined with an implicit landscape elevation.

I have made several pictures on the theme of indecision. I also find it interesting to work on impulse – digital cameras being so small – in a meditative genre like still-life. “Global Coffee” hints at how the best ideas sometimes flow when you are creatively offline, looking at your coffee cup. The title was prompted by a visit to the Global Cafe, a meeting place for media people near Piccadilly Circus, where I attended a meeting about installing digital pictures as background decor. It didn’t work out.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about drawing, and some of these ideas are becoming part of the work I make. I draw the same motif (a tree, a chair) switching between a brush and a Wacom tablet, and play around with the differences. For someone like me, who has both a painting studio and a digital studio, drawing with line is one of the options that bridge the gap between media. I still don’t know the right term to use, because though I usually end up with a giclée iris print, I do not feel I am a digital printmaker, a computer artist, or a digital painter. If I identify this work as “drawing,” and my larger paintings, which use similar techniques, as “drawn paintings,” then I am getting closer. What excites me is the continuing convergence between painting, photography, and the digital. The processes, techniques, and, of course, software can be so rich and surprising I sometimes feel like standing back and letting the pictures make themselves without any interference from me.

I have been using prefabricated components, sections of cardboard that I paint and build into temporary constructions before photographing. When I reassemble these drawings, which are overlaid with digital drawing, I may introduce quite arbitrarily an unrelated photo, a street scene. This may hold the attention and subordinate the rest of the picture, but it can also lift the mood of a picture and activate latent contrasts.

The Pigeons, Kyoto title refers to the central motif. The rest of the piece consists of large-scale cardboard paintings and structures reassembled and drawn over. I poached the central motif from one of a series of works that emerged from a trip to the Nagoya ISEA conference in 2002.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about drawing, and some of these ideas are becoming part of the work I make. I draw the same motif (a tree, a chair) switching between a brush and a Wacom tablet, and play around with the differences. For someone like me, who has both a painting studio and a digital studio, drawing with line is one of the options that bridge the gap between media. I still don’t know the right term to use, because though I usually end up with a giclée iris print, I do not feel I am a digital printmaker, a computer artist, or a digital painter. If I identify this work as “drawing,” and my larger paintings, which use similar techniques, as “drawn paintings,” then I am getting closer. What excites me is the continuing convergence between painting, photography, and the digital. The processes, techniques, and, of course, software can be so rich and surprising I sometimes feel like standing back and letting the pictures make themselves without any interference from me.

I have been using prefabricated components, sections of cardboard that I paint and build into temporary constructions before photographing. When I reassemble these drawings, which are overlaid with digital drawing, I may introduce quite arbitrarily an unrelated photo, a street scene. This may hold the attention and subordinate the rest of the picture, but it can also lift the mood of a picture and activate latent contrasts.

In Studio Chairs, there are two chairs, one a small model in cardboard. The “drawing” is laid around the floor, the picture surface, and I suppose the overall atmosphere is of uncertainty: the confusion and mess that is often the necessary prelude to a spell of creative activity.

This picture happened more or less by chance. I photographed the background in a wallpaper museum in Germany. It is painted in gouache on newspaper, a virtuoso piece of 18th-century chinoiserie by a German artist. I had also been speculating about drawing and movement. Put simply, just about every kind of drawing you can think of involves either the movement of brush or pencil, the implication, or the depiction of movement. I was thinking about running past drawings, seeing them blurred. In this case I was interested in spinning drawings, making drawings that had to be seen as they rotated. Here the drawing is shown in negative. I realised, too, that the ceremony shown on the wallpaper would be the perfect setting for this little event.

I like the idea of capturing inconsequential slices of life and weaving them into the fabric of a picture: shoppers carrying bags, the cup of coffee to avoid doing the work. As an abstract painter, I needed this extra dimension, this extra texture of the ordinary: pigeons on the pavement like touches of the brush. I have been wondering whether the confusion I feel as a painter working both physically and digitally couldn’t be a creative starting point. Sometimes there’s a point in making pieces that are about being aimless, just absorbing whatever you come across walking down the street.

Undecided, a mix of digital snapshots and drawing, feels its way round the surface. In Market Research, I happened to record in a sequence of eight shots a young mother of two being stopped by a market researcher. I was impressed by the children’s patience. The Narrow Way is the name of the street in Hackney, London, in the picture. Now I think about it, I suppose it’s also a narrow kind of improvisation, as everything stems from those eight shots from the digital camera.

STOC is an interactive data visualization, using the metaphor of a planetary system, that maps parameters of stocks in the S&P 500 to animated visual outputs. Existing methods for displaying large amounts of stock-market data do not easily allow comparison between companies, as the data are often presented in tabular format. Some solutions implement a price-over-time graph, with the option of layering on additional stocks or market indices for comparison. STOC allows immediate comparison of hundreds or thousands of stocks, by mapping various stock-specific parameters (such as price percent change, earnings per share, volume, market capitalization, dividend yield, moving average, and comparison to the group average) to easily observable visual outputs (such as size, color, opacity, stroke width, satellite size, orbital distance, orbital direction, and speed).

This visualization is particularly suited for comparisons between items, as users can immediately identify the largest, or reddest, or quickest item in the group. Users control the overall speed, zoom level, and clustering, and they can extract parametric details for each individual element in the group. This system is not limited to displaying stock-market data, and could be used in a wide range of statistical visualizations. For example, one could visualize the parameters of students in a university (such as grade-point average, credit completion rate, total credits, and student account balance) or the parameters of daily weather (daily temperature range, relative humidity, wind speed, precipitation, and comparison to record highs and lows).

I am searching for an activity that will place maximum demands on the full complement of our creative faculties, something that will realize our potential as human beings. It is increasingly difficult for me to find such demands and realizations in object-oriented art-making, which often seems to be locked in a log-jam of self-indulgence, narrowing rather than expanding the artist’s range of activities. Process-oriented art may well point a way around this blockade, and computers offer an extremely high level of involvement in process. The computer is a tool, but a qualitatively different kind of tool than, say, a paint brush. The computer is more like a partner.

“altzero” aims to create musical pieces that can be explored in an intuitive, non linear way, where the composer’s original musical direction is developed and augmented by those visiting the interactive space.

By navigating through these virtual environments, visitors can explore the sounds and create an infinite array of different soundscapes, defining their own musical experience.

The project was initiated in 1999, and consists of a series of experiments (online and offline) exploring the possibilities of interaction, communication, and multi-user collaboration based on sound and space.

As well as the online format, “altzero” has also been shown as an installation in a number of venues.

“altzero1”
First shown in June 2000, this is a 3D space where visitors can place specially composed sound loops, creating different soundscapes. The music you hear depends on where you enter the environment, the route you take, the time spent in specific areas, who you encounter along the way, and how you and others select and affect the sounds.

Your presence within the space is defined by the interaction you have with the soundscape.

Installed at the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, United Kingdom, June 2000; and Transcinema, New York, November 2000.

“altzero2”
An abstract deep ocean space where vertical lines of bubbles rise towards the surface, each line representing one sound. There are 50 distinct sounds placed in the environment, tuned to create rich, complex chords that change smoothly over time. The aim is to motivate people to explore the environment at their own pace, guided by the sounds they hear and enjoy.

Installed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, in February 2001.

squid s o u p
squid s o u p is a group of interactive artists, designers and musicians based in London, UK. They have been experimenting with sound based interaction since 1997, and their work has been shown at international festivals such as Milia, Doors of Perception, Ars Electronica, Sonar FutureSonic, Micro Wave and Transcinema.

“altzero” won the Art Online category of the EMMA Award 2000 and was Macromedia Site of the Day in January 2001.

Inspired by a desire to push persistence-of-vision displays into the third dimension, The Orb is an attempt to bridge the worlds of art and design by creating a beautiful object of inherent interest that also functions as a platform for display. Having seen rather lowresolution attempts at three-dimensional cylindrical persistence of vision displays, I felt that concentrating a higher resolution on the surface of a spherical display would be of increased value, since the sphere has long held special significance as the shape of our home planet as well as many of the bodies we know and see in the sky. The Orb is a step toward re-establishing the relevance of the globe as spherical object for increasing viewers’ awareness and perspective on issues of worldwide significance, following in the footsteps of Buckminster Fuller’s Geoscope proposal in 1962, which called for a 200-foot-diameter sphere covered with 10 million computer-controlled light sources to be suspended over the East River in full view of the United Nations. By leveraging the efficiencies of persistence of vision, The Orb is able to produce about one quarter of one percent of the resolution of the Geoscope with less than one thousandth of one percent of the physical light sources. This efficiency will allow future iterations both to add full depth to the display and increase its scale.

The Orb bridges the gap between the art object and functional information display, advancing desires for more sophisticated digital representations, while simultaneously establishing a dialogue between the new technology and the symbolic content of the display. Featuring an 18-inch-diameter display and aluminum and carbon-fiber construction, this version has a spherical resolution of 1024 X 216 with 24-bit color. It explores visualisations of the phenomena of creation and destruction within the universe, evoking a “big bang” and eventual climate collapse.

Summary

With a series of AI-generated horse paintings in 2×2 grid presentation, we convey a message – “Keep Running” during the lockdown period. Instead of showing one final painting, we deliberately show the evolving process of each horse painting in clockwise manner, to celebrate the mass-production and possible diversity by AI-generation.

Abstract

Swept-volume solids are 30 models that represent the space objects occupy or sweep out while moving. We’ve been working with complex swept volumes at Boeing for several years and often produce models with visually interesting shapes. This display is a collection of some of those models.

The purpose of this display is to show engineering-related swept volumes created by three different types of applications. The geometry for each model was generated by the voxel-based software we developed for use in design analysis, which is based on the methods discussed in the haptics interaction paper we presented at SIGGRAPH 99. The physical 30 models were printed on a Z Corp model 406 color 3D printer.

The first model is a representation of human-figure reach analysis motion for a new aircraft seating design project. The motion was created by keyframing positions of a human model performing several tasks, including reaching under the seat. The tessellated model was generated by the swept-volume module of the Voxmap PointShell (VPS) software toolkit.

The second model is of the extend/retract motion of the main landing gear of a large commercial aircraft. It is shown here without wheels for better visibility of internal linkages. The motion was created in CATIA and exported to our FlyThru visualization software for swept-volume model creation using VPS.

The motion paths for the third model were created by manipulating objects in a physically based virtual environment using a haptics force-feedback device. The collection of swept volumes shows the extraction paths of hydraulic system components through an access port. Like the other two models, the tessellated solids were created by the swept-volume generation functions of the VPS toolkit.

For close to six years, I have been acquainting myself with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and have utilized this medium in tandem with other digital imaging systems to chart the geography of physical and psychological space. The GIS components include people and methodologies as well as the hardware and software devices used to combine and generate data and visual displays. This image is a map that gives form to the aesthetic preferenes of a group of people that I selected to do a visual survey of my neighborhood in Portland, Maine. While the subject matter is local, the project has relevance in the larger context of exploring the role of art, aesthetics, and creativity in community development. The map is part of a series of small-scale mutltiples that reflect my concern with visual cognition; I am interested in creating images that serve to illustrate or embody thought patterns and processes. Influences on my thinking and creative work include the writings of Theosophists Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, who in 1901 published the book, Thought Forms, which addressed the power of thought and its manifestation as visible form. I am also very interested in the blackboard drawings of Rudolf Steiner and Joseph Beuys, which were a means of visualizing ideas about art and other subjects. Beuys once stated: “Everyone is an artist,” which is a concept central to my project. While I am trained in the tradition of making authentic forms in relationship to a specific medium (painting) and a primary discipline (visual art), my current interests lead me toward producing visual forms that can be co-authored or replicated by individuals other than myself. GIS has to do with spatial analysis and awareness, and has the capacity to create a better understanding and appreciation of both the natural and the built environment. My intention is to make maps of individual and societal perceptions, views and opinions, which serve to both unite and separate human beings from one another. Many contemporary artists are incorporating elements of GIS into their work, such as spatial coordinates, digital maps, and remote-sensing images. I am very interested in the full aesthetic impact of this medium, and more specifically I’m interested in using it to address issues related to cultural and environmental sustainability.

For close to six years, I have been acquainting myself with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and have utilized this medium in tandem with other digital imaging systems to chart the geography of physical and psychological space. The GIS components include people and methodologies as well as the hardware and software devices used to combine and generate data and visual displays. This image is a map that gives form to the aesthetic preferenes of a group of people that I selected to do a visual survey of my neighborhood in Portland, Maine. While the subject matter is local, the project has relevance in the larger context of exploring the role of art, aesthetics, and creativity in community development. The map is part of a series of small-scale mutltiples that reflect my concern with visual cognition; I am interested in creating images that serve to illustrate or embody thought patterns and processes. Influences on my thinking and creative work include the writings of Theosophists Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, who in 1901 published the book, Thought Forms, which addressed the power of thought and its manifestation as visible form. I am also very interested in the blackboard drawings of Rudolf Steiner and Joseph Beuys, which were a means of visualizing ideas about art and other subjects. Beuys once stated: “Everyone is an artist,” which is a concept central to my project. While I am trained in the tradition of making authentic forms in relationship to a specific medium (painting) and a primary discipline (visual art), my current interests lead me toward producing visual forms that can be co-authored or replicated by individuals other than myself. GIS has to do with spatial analysis and awareness, and has the capacity to create a better understanding and appreciation of both the natural and the built environment. My intention is to make maps of individual and societal perceptions, views and opinions, which serve to both unite and separate human beings from one another. Many contemporary artists are incorporating elements of GIS into their work, such as spatial coordinates, digital maps, and remote-sensing images. I am very interested in the full aesthetic impact of this medium, and more specifically I’m interested in using it to address issues related to cultural and environmental sustainability .

For close to six years, I have been acquainting myself with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and have utilized this medium in tandem with other digital imaging systems to chart the geography of physical and psychological space. The GIS components include people and methodologies as well as the hardware and software devices used to combine and generate data and visual displays. This image is a map that gives form to the aesthetic preferenes of a group of people that I selected to do a visual survey of my neighborhood in Portland, Maine. While the subject matter is local, the project has relevance in the larger context of exploring the role of art, aesthetics, and creativity in community development. The map is part of a series of small-scale mutltiples that reflect my concern with visual cognition; I am interested in creating images that serve to illustrate or embody thought patterns and processes. Influences on my thinking and creative work include the writings of Theosophists Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, who in 1901 published the book, Thought Forms, which addressed the power of thought and its manifestation as visible form. I am also very interested in the blackboard drawings of Rudolf Steiner and Joseph Beuys, which were a means of visualizing ideas about art and other subjects. Beuys once stated: “Everyone is an artist,” which is a concept central to my project. While I am trained in the tradition of making authentic forms in relationship to a specific medium (painting) and a primary discipline (visual art), my current interests lead me toward producing visual forms that can be co-authored or replicated by individuals other than myself. GIS has to do with spatial analysis and awareness, and has the capacity to create a better understanding and appreciation of both the natural and the built environment. My intention is to make maps of individual and societal perceptions, views and opinions, which serve to both unite and separate human beings from one another. Many contemporary artists are incorporating elements of GIS into their work, such as spatial coordinates, digital maps, and remote-sensing images. I am very interested in the full aesthetic impact of this medium, and more specifically I’m interested in using it to address issues related to cultural and environmental sustainability .

Inventions often expand human capacities. As a car is a physical protease and improves transport speed and comfort, a computer can be seen as a mental protease that speeds up calculations. Marshall McLuhan considers all media forms as expansions of the human senses, and the global network as an extension of the nervous system. Our intention was to make the first small steps toward the emotional protease that could allow us to influence our surroundings by means of affective input-a new way of nonreflected and unconscious decision-making.

When visitors put their hands into the installation’s sensors, their emotions are measured by galvanic skin response. As a result, visitors get a personalised video performance that influences the character of image and sound, the order and the rhythm. As visitors follow different branches of the nonlinear structure, they enter an emotional-technological dialog.

affectiveCinema is difficult to categorize. It is somewhere in the convergence of art, games, and science. The idea of emotional navigation can be very close to interhuman communications, which include many more factors than the spoken language. The video image is exclusively the face of an actor whose limited expressions are extended by means of multimedia. affectiveCinema could be interpreted as an encounter with someone strange, someone virtual, or even oneself. Because affectiveCinema includes live takes of the visitor’s face, the frontier between monitor and visitor is even blurrier.

Controversial new art forms have always been closely inspected, including their underlying environmental and cultural influences, which are revealed in artwork over time. This work is a reflective time-based piece that visually tells a story about the artist’s aesthetic journeys, including the journey from traditional to digital. A 20-year period is dilated by juxtaposing, segmenting, and interweaving passages of artistic works and influences.

The artist is intrigued by stories told by other new-media artists, and their journeys are reflected in the motion of the piece. The artist considers the use of computers and other new forms of technology that deal with time an exciting medium in which to bring life to aesthetic expressions.

Jane Prophet’s project explores brain activity during the contemplation of artworks and death. 

The questions that underpin this project are:
Can contemporary neuroscience and new imaging technologies increase our understanding of consciousness?
 When we look at memento mori artworks are we prompted to contemplate our own mortality? What parts of the brain are active when we look at these artworks? What parts of the brain are active when we meditate on death? Is there any similarity in brain function in these two instances?
This project is a collaboration between the visual artist, Jane Prophet and neuroscientists Zoran Josipovic (NYU) and Andreas Roepstorrf (Aarhus University). Jane will be the subject of a trial where she will look at representations of memento mori and vanitas paintings and objects while being MRI scanned to monitor the functions of her brain.
Following Zoran Josipovic’s instructions, she will learn to meditate, specifically to contemplate death. She will repeat the meditation exercises in an fMRI scanner. Accumulated fMRI brain images will be processed, producing 3D data of the artist’s brain. Sculptural objects made from this data will show the brain in general and highlight the active areas identified during the meditation exercises. The collaborative process also forms the basis for co-authored papers.

Jane Prophet的作品探索對於冥想死亡時的腦部運作情形。此計劃中所蘊含的提問，包含當今神經科學與顯影技術，是否有助於對意識的了解？面對象徵死亡的作品 (memento mori artworks) 時是否會促使觀者思考自身的生死？而在反省死亡時，腦部的什麼部位是活躍的？這兩種例子中，腦部的活動又有何異同？

此計劃是視覺藝術家Jane Prophet、神經科學家Zoran Josipovic (NYU)與Andreas Porpstorrf (Aarhus University)合作而成。Jane會作為受試者，觀看死亡象徵與浮華虛空繪畫的同時接受功能性核磁共振掃描(fMRI)，監測她腦部的活動。
隨後Zoran Josipovic會指導她冥想，並專注於反省思亡。藝術家在fMRI掃描器內重複前述的練習，而累積的腦部斷層造影圖，會被立體堆疊成藝術家的大腦，而這透過資料形成的雕塑物件，則會突顯在冥想行為中活躍的部分。此合作研究亦會成為未來論文發表的起點。

Video projection mapped onto a life-sized 3D printed self-portrait sculptures produced by combining 3D facial scanning with fMRI brain data that is gathered during novel MRI experiments, designed in collaboration with two neuroscientists, during which the artist views memento mori paintings and meditates on death in the scanner.

This performance interlaces the movements of a performer with the choreography of the sound. The flutist uses the sound, the room, and her movements to affect the resonances of a space, mixing technology, music, and pathways to discover new meanings of space. A webcam tracks the movements, and a tiny wireless triggering device attached to the flute controls the structure and pacing of the work as well as the sound processing in real time.

This work-in-progress is part of the artist’s 2009 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Fellowship Award project. It is based on five months of research into various Japanese dance traditions and spiritual spaces (architectures), and collaborations with traditional and electronic musicians. The final goal of this work is to create an ensemble piece in which two to four players are able to move within a space and interact with the music, each other, and the sound that travels within the space. The spatialization (sound diffusion) is an important feature of the piece, like an additional player in the ensemble.

I was born in Detroit in 1964 and now live in Santa Cruz, California. An artist from day one, I perfected my skills over the years in design by working alongside top designers in the graphic design trade and constantly experimenting with my artistic abilities.

My art consists of paintings digitally rendered on the computer using a combination of drawing and painting software, then outputting on an inkjet plotter. Each digital image is a one-of-a-kind signed artist’s proof with limited editions of 250.

I was born in Detroit in 1964 and now live in Santa Cruz, California. An artist from day one, I perfected my skills over the years in design by working alongside top designers in the graphic design trade and constantly experimenting with my artistic abilities.

My art consists of paintings digitally rendered on the computer using a combination of drawing and painting software, then outputting on an inkjet plotter. Each digital image is a one-of-a-kind signed artist’s proof with limited editions of 250.

“The Digital Me” series explores my interactions with the digital world on both physical and metaphysical levels. I share my artistic vision using the skills and tools at my disposal; this invariably involves technology.

“Pixel Mask” involves self-expression with a clay mask molded from my face. Using several digital prints, I have reconstructed my head from punched out “pixels,” which, in this case, are literally “picture elements.” Unlike a jigsaw puzzle, where the image is predetermined, my re-creation here is more adventurous. Bits of beard turn into hair; bits of forehead turn into cheek, and in the end, the eyes just stare back at you with some of the spirit but none of the life of the creator.

“Pixel Portrait” is a lithograph that explores technique, the self, and reproduction. I started with a low-resolution digital image of my face, and for each pixel, I placed one drop of touche (a greasy liquid) on the lithography stone. The drop dried, leaving the grease (and the desired gray). The resulting print is a hybrid: the medium is analog; the image is digital. The original digital image took a moment to shoot and can be printed endlessly. The lithograph took hours of painstaking labor to produce, and only eight were printed. Step back. As a whole, the image takes on more character and life than the original digital print. There is only one me, but unlike my images, I am ever changing.

“Vector Block” is hand-cut linoleum that represents the interaction of self and tool. I converted a digital photograph of myself into a vector graphic. To maintain the spirit and integrity of the vector image, I plotted it on an old HP graphics plotter. The plotter was my inspiration as I held the blade in my hand, and the plot guided my cutting. Doing by hand what a machine can do is challenging, yet it can empower the artist in new ways.

Traditionally, the block is used to create prints, and I printed an edition of seven. The prints, however, are secondary; they mirror the image as they mirror my true intention. The block itself is my true representation. I am a tool for creation, a source. Influenced by technology, history, and a desire to disseminate my ideas and ideals, I show myself for all to see.

Simulacrum is a single channel video that documents people using electronic media as soft memory, electronic bodies flickering through simulated experience. Behind a screen, recording the act of being behind a screen, recording. The work examines the liminal states of language, time and memory through the lens of glitch systems, sonic sculpture, performative/participatory video and indeterminate database sequencing.

Mind and Body Environment is an installation artwork about the act of visual objectification. An ominous kinetic sculpture in the shape of a head looms above gallery visitors. Behind its transparent face are various media devices that replace body parts and a neon circle and crosshairs that symbolizes gun sights, missile targeting systems, photographic scopes, and cinema camera viewfinders. The sculpture makes targets out of its viewers and attempts to locate, analyze, and react to the movements and sounds they make within the space. It has the capacity to capture and control the visual and acoustical representation of its audience.

There is a long history in the visual arts of investigations into the act of looking. This work takes specific inspiration from Edouard Manet’s paintings of The Execution of Maximilian (1868) and Olympia (1863), and from the technological arena of modern conventional war machines — where seeing is destroying. On the political level, the sculpture references the national leader who uses a network of information such as satellite surveillance (or media polling) to monitor enemy position, and then orders manuevers to be carried out by weaponry (or campaign specialists) in remote locations. On a personal level, it can be a metaphor for a thought process that occurs when looking at another human being, object, or ideology. The installation is meant to provoke ideas about the borders between logic and instinct, local interest and global responsibility, and the mind and body.

Contemporary technological and aesthetic developments challenge us to play a more engaged and active role as cultural consumers. We help create the content we enjoy: we curate the playlists we listen to, we compete in the online games we play, and we collaboratively filter the media we watch. Within this context, traditional concert performance, particularly of classical and contemporary music, seems increasingly anachronistic. Audiences sit in dark halls, often looking at a conductor whose back is turned toward them, afraid to cough or sneeze lest they disturb their neighbors.

Graph Theory aims to bridge this experiential gap. Through its availability on the internet, Graph Theory creatively engages audiences outside the concert hall. The project incorporates their activities into the context of a live concert performance. Web site visitors, who need not have specialized musical training, use a visual interface to navigate short, looping musical fragments to create their own unique path through the open-form composition for solo violin. Before each concert performance, the live performer, a violinist, visits the web site to print out a new copy of the score, the linear fragments of which are ordered based on the decisions made by site visitors.

This artwork is simplistic in composition, in contrast to the code complexity that created the image. The code is the ASCII scene file that created the rendered image. This piece demonstrates that what we see in digital imagery is much more complex in creation that in visualization. The composition of this image consists of a hot-sauce bottle, a fork, and a plate rendered as realistically as possible, then represented by changing colors in the code.

Being, Nothing More is an object that occupies the same physical space as my body. My volume, calculated using air displacement plethysmography, was found to occupy 5,616.188 cubic inches at age 38. This number is the basis for a series of artworks in which every object occupies the same volume.

The work is playable here. i made this. you play this. we are enemies. is an art game and interactive digital poem which uses game levels built on screen shots from influential community based websites/portals. Using messy hand drawn elements, strange texts, sounds and multimedia layering, the artwork lets users play in the worlds hovering over and beneath what we browse, to exist outside/over their controlling constraints. Your arrow keys and space bar will guide you, with the occasional mouse click begging for attention. Each day the internet is humming with a million small interventions. From the humorous mocking of community content sites like Fark, to the net gate keepers Yahoo and Google, partisan political portals like Huffington Post or the open source/file sharing pirates of Mininova, the web is an easy tool/weapon for meddling/influencing and sharing/forcing/alluring your opinion on whomever clicks. And yet this digiscape is a deceiving and uneasy place, with continual streams of generic expression/content, cute dogs and accident clips, knocking against an incredible range of political/social beliefs hidden beneath the screen. Even short sequences of words, titled links or blinking ads can reveal the strange, wondrous and treacherous.

This image is from a series that explores the deconstruction of the human body. The humans have been combined with mechanical parts to create beings that are a hybrid of man and machine. This particular image represents all that remains of a natural body. The body has been broken down and used for parts while the head remains locked away waiting for the time when it will also be taken and used in the creation of another being.

In my work, I merge objects that have been captured with a digital camera with objects that have been modeled three-dimensionally in the computer. This allows me to have greater control over the image and the environment I am creating. I am able to represent my ideas without restrictions or limitations.

The Insatiable is a video installation composited from a dozen sets of footage filmed at an open night market in Taiwan. It is part of the Things that are edible series, created by artist Jawshing Arthur Liou during an artistic residency in his hometown of Taipei after 16 years of living abroad. Working with both lens-based representation and digital post-production, Liou aims to transform recognizable imagery into realms only the mind can reach. His photographically realistic digital videos are filled with details with which he responds to the experience of illness, spiritual sanctuary, and the spectacles of life. The street scenes here are only half a mile away from his home. The visual strategy is a fusion of macro and micro views. The streetlights and mingling walkers are transformed into bodies of massive creatures, bearing resemblance to snakes, dragons, or even huge intestines. Liou says, “Our intimacy with food and food-related culture makes this my first choice of subject matter. With digital post-production tools, I transformed the night market into massive bodies in the sky, a wedding banquet into jewelry-banded plates, and my mother’s rice dish into landscapes.” In this way he creates “a rewarding treat in and of itself.”

In this interactive art installation, first exhibited at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, panes in a suspended window frame are substituted for a semi-translucent material suitable for rear projection. A video camera mounted above the suspended window is pointed toward a real window behind it. The panes in the real window are covered with mirrors.

The area between the two windows is the interaction zone. When a person walks between the two windows, the primary projected image breaks up into squares that rebound back and forth with elastic properties. Breaking up the primary image reveals a second one, consisting of the spectator’s own live video image.

The installation interlaces multiple layers of real and virtual surfaces, effectively suspending the normal function of the real window. As they wander through the interaction zone, viewers find themselves hovering between the laminations of this fictitious space. Their movement creates an organic disturbance in the layers, focusing attention on the nature and function of spatial boundaries in physical and virtual worlds.

The body of work that I have created in the past year reflects my internal confrontations. Growing up in a conservative Latin environment, there were many adjustments I had to make to meet the expectations of my own culture. As I grew up and came into my own identity, I asked questions that most Mexican families do not take lightly. LGBTQ culture and mental health are two things that seem to create friction in a Latin household. The work I created this year directly links to these questions, as I had to experience my identity and mental struggles in silence for most of my life. These experiences created very deep wounds to which I only applied temporary sutures. Questioning authority is also a taboo for many Latin cultures, but that is exactly what I did. I began to create my own rules that my family slowly began to follow. Now, as an adult, after years of catering to traditions with which I did not agree, I began to create the art displayed as a method of healing. This body of work explores the complexities of internal issues of healing. The themes explored all come from this vulnerability and how I have embraced said vulnerabilities. As I come into my own and open my heart to the possibilities of love. Now, in the middle of my transition, I chose to externalize these experiences. The E-Zine on the site is a chronicle of these experiences in written form. In the form of love letters and mixtapes to the individuals who have given me the opportunities of the heart necessary to take these steps toward loving myself. Inspired by the visual pieces I created in conjunction with the writing as well as the teen rom-coms of the ’90s. This body of work fleshes me out in ways simple words cannot express.

This short abstract film with dark accents appears like a fleeting dream in which forms come and go like ghosts in the midst of nocturnal chaos. It was created by way of an original approach to digital animation (“fortuitous accidents”) based on an unusual exchange between director/animator Jean Detheux and composer Jean Derome. With no storyboard, no preconceived idea of where to go, Detheux gave Derome a silent clip to set music to. Detheux then took that music and made new images for/from it. Derome took the new images and made new music for them, and so on, until Detheux and Derome had about 50 minutes of original material to work with. Editing produced two films, Liaisons (9 minutes) then Rupture (about 3 minutes).

Summary

Viewporter is an interactive installation that displays a computer-generated video of a city. Viewers can rotate the screen to accelerate the playback speed of the video. The project makes an analogy between the screen and a telescope to re-think on the illusion promoted in development programs.

Abstract

Viewporter is an interactive installation that displays computer generated video of a city. Viewer rotates the screen attached to a device that resembles a telescope to accelerate the playback speed of the video. In this project, the machine learning technique is utilized to train and generate the city skyline. Images that capture the Seoul skyline with a drone was collected and trained. As one of the developed metropolitan city, Seoul is continuously being developed to construct high- rise buildings. While the image of the skyline with high-rise buildings have been utilized to symbolize dream and utopia of the city through the media, the lives of the residents with mundane duties have been far-fetched from the attractive image promoted through the propagandistic videos on media. The installation Viewporter uses the analogy of a telescope in a tourist attractions to emphasize the distance between the idealized and the real and have us re-think the illusion and fantasy that are promoted through images of development programs.

Sisyphus is the first embodiment of an idea by Jean-Pierre Hebert using sand as a digital art medium. Sisyphus was made by Ho, a collaboration between Jean-Pierre Hebert and Bruce Shapiro. Sisyphus is a quiet piece inspiring awe and calm, an invitation to relax and encouragement to meditate. Utilizing the means and resources of our time, the work extends humanity’s old sacred traditions of scratching the surface of the earth and working, with sand. Our historical use of patterns and designs, from Aegean spirals to modern geometries is incorporated. At rest, an innocent sandbox, Sisyphus contains mechanisms, controls, and software that animate and shape its surface. Original etchings in plays of sand, light and shadow, geometries and colours unfold a new space of consciousness and inspiration.

Ulysses is the second generation development of this idea, created by Jean-Pierre Hebert with help from Denny Bollay, David Bothman and Scott Masch. While Sisyphus was sly, Ulysses is shrewd and having landed on many beaches, knows silicon better. Ulysses can be a quieter Zen garden for the meditative. It can also mutate into a quicker interactive piece evolving to advanced graphics capabilities and internet connectivity, stimulating a sharp mind and keen wit. Currently in infancy, Ulysses‘ new capabilities will bloom rapidly. Why Ulysses and not Odysseus? Because James Joyce envisioned hypertext.

The process is a convergence of mathematics and drawing. Arrangements of forms and numbers, geometries and structures, perspectives and symmetries are found and evolved in code form to produce images. This results in lines that are then drawn one by one on paper, using graphite leads, silver points, water colors, inks with pens, or brushes using analog rather than digital technology. This said, only the appearance of the process has been outlined. The mind and soul behind it remain, in fact, why and how the work is done, essential while the process remains circumstantial. Art – with computer.

Content: no; Intent and invitation: yes.

The work is abstract by choice.

Mathematics is an inspiration and a path in the search for the spiritual, on inspiration and a powerful means in the conception and execution of the work. Each one will interpret abstraction at one’s own inclination and whim: so it is hoped that the work will set the viewers’ thoughts, imaginations, dreams, and meditations free.

“a few drawings,
mere ‘restes d’encre’,

each, a few
lines on a sheet of paper,

each, countless
& invisible
lines of code in a computer,

each, minute
& uncertain
ink strokes by an indefatigable plotter.”

The process is a convergence of mathematics and drawing. Arrangements of forms and numbers, geometries and structures, perspectives and symmetries are found and evolved in code form to produce images. This results in lines that are then drawn one by one on paper, using graphite leads, silver points, water colors, inks with pens, or brushes using analog rather than digital technology. This said, only the appearance of the process has been outlined. The mind and soul behind it remain, in fact, why and how the work is done, essential while the process remains circumstantial. Art – with computer.

Content: no; Intent and invitation: yes.

The work is abstract by choice.

Mathematics is an inspiration and a path in the search for the spiritual, on inspiration and a powerful means in the conception and execution of the work. Each one will interpret abstraction at one’s own inclination and whim: so it is hoped that the work will set the viewers’ thoughts, imaginations, dreams, and meditations free.

“a few drawings,
mere ‘restes d’encre’,

each, a few
lines on a sheet of paper,

each, countless
& invisible
lines of code in a computer,

each, minute
& uncertain
ink strokes by an indefatigable plotter.”

Statement: This book is inspired and structured by Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver), the mesostics of John Cage, the galactic tides of Alar and Juri Toomre, the typography of Iliazd. I wrote software to let me read through Italo Calvino’s English translation of his original Le Citta Invisibili by William Weaver in order to create a series of mesostic poems. This process only kept a small fraction of the original text. I illustrated the poems, using my own software.

Overview of the software: First, the book title as mesostic line filters and selects proper city names as wing words. Then city name mesostics assemble each poem from snippets chosen in their order of appearance within each city chapter. Last, fractal timelines animate worlds of lines, colors, and symbols implied by each city character and textual properties. Overall, generative poetry composed by ideas translated into code, with deliberate rule breaking through chance or bugs, and digital humor.

Media: The poetry is printed with metal types on the letterpress, and the illustrations are printed on the inkjet. The altered original book is a digital intervention completed by traditional, analog processes. Seventy-three copies were designed using Gil Sans Light composed by Michael and Winifred Bixler and then Sandra Lidell Reese and Harry Reese used letterpress printing to print the books. Drawings are by Jean-Pierre Hebert and printed on Niyodo Natural with an Epson Stylus Pro 4800. Handmade paper cover and binding by Turkey Press.

I have always admired calligraphy, sketches, drawings, etchings, for these works show so clearly not only the artist’s hand, but also the eye, the mind guiding it. I have always loved drawings and loved to draw. Also, for 20 years my personal endeavor has been to create a new kind of drawing, where my mind or my eyes or my hand would no longer be a limit. Drawings that would not be constrained by fatigue, cramps, inaccuracies, distraction, or the limits of time. Drawings where new levels of imagination, patience, surprise, and desire would become possible.

To draw, some artists use their whole bodies, some their shoulders, their elbows, or their wrists. Some use five fingers, or one, or only their finger tips. I use only my brain to draw. To conceive and produce these drawings, I have studied the micro gestures that drawings are made of, and I have created and tamed tracing devices to handle them for me. As Victor Vasarely or Sol Lewitt instructed their helpers, I pair the creative concept behind each piece with the necessary instructions for the helpers I employ to produce it.

My helpers are tools and devices, not people. My helping devices are balls, magnets, pendulums, plotters, smart motors, spinners, syringes, teflon tubes, tops, water, and wires combined and driven by natural forces or software. I write the software myself, using many of the paradigms found in nature for creation of shapes. This is how my abstractions often inherit their organic character. My material is the line, the thread, the filament my tools can trace. My favorite medium is pen and ink or graphite on paper. Sometimes, I may trace these lines into sand, or wood, or etching plates; or I may align blobs, drips, drops, or use a brush. Often, I add hand marks of some sort.

My work abstracts inherent structures that underly nature at all scales to explore space and time. Its purpose is to stimulate the mind, elevate the spirit, quiet energies, and encourage meditation.

I started this art project in 2004, with a clear vision of [lines that never meet, filaments, glyphs, quantum foam, maze packing, linelets, glyphlets, squiglets, and finally stringlets]. Differentiated elements self assembling, covering the plane, but never touching or intersecting each other. At times I saw ecology [habitats, species], or people [invasions, colonisations, migrations, roadmaps for peace, mazes], or bacteria [infections, resistances], and then it appeared in 2016 that the model evokes the physics of polymer strands unfolding [for instance in the case of new solar photo-voltaic material research].

The art is rendered in panels up to 8 x 4ft. with 2.5 millions stringlets, or displayed as simple, short animations. (Works currently exhibited in the Art | Sci Center: “Quantum Metaphors” at the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute).

For an algorist, the line is a dream medium. It is at the same time simple, extensible, rich. It can be suggestive of motion, time, music, light, nature. It can be rendered in innumerable ways, styles, and processes. It is perfect material for geometry, for art, for thought. It is a natural object-oriented software subject.

This year, I have been pursuing my investigation of the line. In the past I have asked a single line with a complex behavior to build the whole work. Now, instead, I consider the line simply an element in a set, or a working individual within an active group of peers. The individual and the group have their own characterizations and be­haviors, and their release and interactions create the work. I define, in particular, sets of grids (akin to the one used by Fran9ois Morellet, Sol Lewit, and others) and subject them to abstract force fields and chance, striking a balance between order and chaos. This starts as a concept piece created in software, but it does not stop there: I want to see a proof on paper produced in an appropriate medium. Rosettes grises is one of the initial sketches and explorations made for this series. Currently, I work on similar pieces that I render on plotters or engrave as dry points on copper plates to produce hand-pulled prints on etching presses.

I have always admired calligraphy, sketches, drawings, and etchings, for these works show so clearly the artist’s hand and the eye and mind guiding it. I have always liked to draw. But for 20 years, I have also endeavored to use mathematics, personal software, and computer driven devices to conceive and produce drawings of a compelling quality, matching the masterpieces of past tradition.

This work is an exploration of the world of lines; supple watercolor lines building surfaces like threads make fabrics in abstract landscapes, concrete geometries, or minimal scenes. Flexible, innumerable lines, their crafted rhythms organize shapes and shades.

Their accurate arrangement is planned by precise calculations. These calculations are organized by a master plan composed as a framework uniquely describing the piece. A piece results from its conception, from a plan, and made visible by drawing lines. Preliminary sketches and studies are usually necessary before a good size piece can be completed.

The hand is too impatient to render the accuracy and intricacies of the final design. As a weaver needs a loom to manage one’s thread, mechanical help is required to guide pens faithfully and save the elegance and details of the work. Thus empowered, the mind can request and perform what hand alone cannot do.

Each piece is unique and rendered with light fast inks or leads on quality, acid-free paper. According to size and complexity, a few hours to a few days are needed to set-in inks the few yards (or the few miles) of lines to create the piece.

Help comes from a mechanical device: the plotter. A computer is needed to drive this plotter. It can also help in the computations mentioned before – as a piece is defined by thousands (or millions) of points – and in composing the computations plan. Only custom software that I write myself is used here. This allows for an intimate dialogue with the computer and insures the complete originality of this work.

Although a computer is involved in the creative process, this work is nothing but a tribute to and a continuation of thousands of years of drawing, geometry, and fine art from all civilizations past. In fact, the computer as a tool fades entirely behind the aesthetic and spiritual concerns that art builds upon.

More recently, I have ventured into new media: from Gide prints to etchings, from works on wood and steel, to glass and sand. In this diversified approach, the above process remains exactly the same. In fact, the power of the process is a clear invitation to explore new media as new production techniques extend the process reaches, and new means render my conceptual lines in new ways. So I continue creating images by writing software, abstract description of visions that I then translate to the world of objects.

Four Scenes of Mount Tai’ In empathy with Carl Jung’s concept of unus mundus, and feeling that numbers are in the same continuum as our minds and souls, I was tempted to try a series following the classical Chinese scholars’ fantasies, in my own algorithmic way. I chose the most venerated of the five sacred Chinese mountains – Mount Tai in the Shandong province – as the location of four scenes.

The Primary Lady of Blue Mist was the goddess sharing Mount Tai with the Mountain god, who controlled the life and death of all individuals. Shandong Mountains, a diptych, draws a symbolic map of the whole area. Ascending the South Heavenly Gate was a 6,000 stone steps grueling effort, a preliminary to offering the Feng ritual to heaven.

I draw because I love to draw and always had a passion for drawings. Since the late 1970s, I have been working with the conviction that to gain power and beauty, drawing should become pure mental activity more than gestural skill. I have endeavored to make it so by banning completely the physical side of drawing. I create drawings by writing original code that will define the very concept for each piece. Running this code produces the path that guides the device that actually produces the physical proof on paper with pens, leads, or brushes. My process is thus akin to composing or choreographing or simply … thinking. It starts with the vision of the piece. It continues with the precise anticipation of the imaginary hand motions or the real pencil path implied by the development of the drawing. It ends with a final proof of concept on paper.

What makes it so rewarding is my continuing fascination with the slow, mesmerizing apparition of each drawing on the paper and the anticipation of witnessing the correct unfolding of the proof. There is also the possible good surprise of a happy “accident,” always tempered by the possible ink failure. Here, everything went wrong for the proofing, so much so that I annotated all the problems by hand afterwards. Nevertheless, I gave the piece a name that marks my attachment to my charming but temperamental plotters.

An evolving abstraction of the landscape within a cell as it prepares itself for division. Swarms of DNA strands uncoil as they are copied during chromosomes replication. The multiplicity of scales, the vast number of strands surging from the deep inner space of the cell into the forefront, the myriad spirals all suggest the complexity and the vastness of the underlying coded information. The fuzzy symmetries evoke the replications as life evolves. The self-similarities convey that what we see has happened before and knows how to happen again. Each panel illustrates one phase in the process.

The work is not a scientific illustration, and it does not attempt to illustrate or explain genetic processes in the cell. It means to provoke a meditation about the awesome nature and structures of life and of our efforts to understand it.

An evolving abstraction of the landscape within a cell as it prepares itself for division. Swarms of DNA strands uncoil as they are copied during chromosomes replication. The multiplicity of scales, the vast number of strands surging from the deep inner space of the cell into the forefront, the myriad spirals all suggest the complexity and the vastness of the underlying coded information. The fuzzy symmetries evoke the replications as life evolves. The self-similarities convey that what we see has happened before and knows how to happen again. Each panel illustrates one phase in the process.

The work is not a scientific illustration, and it does not attempt to illustrate or explain genetic processes in the cell. It means to provoke a meditation about the awesome nature and structures of life and of our efforts to understand it.

An evolving abstraction of the landscape within a cell as it prepares itself for division. Swarms of DNA strands uncoil as they are copied during chromosomes replication. The multiplicity of scales, the vast number of strands surging from the deep inner space of the cell into the forefront, the myriad spirals all suggest the complexity and the vastness of the underlying coded information. The fuzzy symmetries evoke the replications as life evolves. The self-similarities convey that what we see has happened before and knows how to happen again. Each panel illustrates one phase in the process.

The work is not a scientific illustration, and it does not attempt to illustrate or explain genetic processes in the cell. It means to provoke a meditation about the awesome nature and structures of life and of our efforts to understand it.

This work was inspired initially by traditional Japanese Zen gardens. As the sand trace proceeds at a slow, quiet, meditative pace, time becomes an important element of the work. Drawing on paper, or tracing sand, takes time, and has its own rythms. I have also explored the possibility of composing and synthesizing music, by linking space, time and sound. The current version of Ulysse is an investigation of the sets of rules that allow exploration of this continuum. Victor diNovi built the mahogany plinth. David Bothman helped with motion control. And the music was developed in collaboration with lannis Zannos .

A few drawings,
mere ‘restes d’encre’,
each a single
line on a sheet of paper,
each, countless
invisible
lines of code in a computer,
each, minute
uncertain
ink strokes by an indefatigable plotter.

I worked at Digital Effects, the first 3D computer animation company in New York City, until its bankruptcy in 1985.  Jeanne Mara’s partner, Steve Legensky, purchased equipment for Intelligent Light at the Digital Effects auction.

When SIGGRAPH announced that the 1986 Art Show would be a Retrospective, I half-jokingly mused aloud about framing my Digital Effects jacket; the concept evolved to include a coat rack with an auction ticket.

I was surprised the piece was accepted into the show, and recall a telephone conversation with the 1986 Art Show Chair, Patric Prince, who pressed me for a title — and used my reply verbatim.

D. L. (Debbie) Deas

Folding along curves is very different from folding straight lines. The most important difference is that when you make a curved crease, the two parts of the paper that lie on opposite sides of the crease cannot be made to lie flat against each other. So while in conventional origami, facets of the paper become layered and hidden, in curved origami most of the paper remains exposed to view. This usually results in larger spans of paper that must be self supporting, so even the materials used are different: most origami paper is as thin as possible, while curved origami often requires very heavy paper or card stock.

I strive to create designs in which complexity arises from the interaction or repetition of simple shapes, so that the results are both immediately comprehensible and unexpected. I begin with experimentation: I put some creases in the paper, bend it and see what shapes interest me. Shall I repeat the shapes symmetrically or transition to a different shape? How will the regions interact with each other, and what can be done with the paper between two regions to allow a smooth transition, without stretching or crumpling the paper?

By modeling paper as an idealized mathematical surface and applying theorems from differential geometry, we can develop methods for analyzing and designing curved origami shapes. Paper can be represented as a “developable” surface, which means that no matter how you fold or bend it, at every point on the surface it is possible to embed a straight line in the surface passing through the point. Developable surfaces may be planes, generalized cylinders or cones, or tangent surfaces.

Intuition tells us that we cannot fold a sphere from a piece of paper, and yet the tops of the triangular pillows in Sails (see image and crease pattern) appear to be domed. Look closely, and you will see that they are in fact equilateral triangles with three tapering cylindrical sections attached. On the other side of the three curved creases are three cones that all come to a point below the center of the dome. These units are connected with a planar tiling of triangles. All the component surfaces are developable. Even for models where the curves are all circular arcs, like Sails, the length and position of those arcs cannot be calculated without computer assistance.

The constraints imposed to guarantee that the repeated units will tile the plane require us to numerically solve an equation containing an elliptic integral. Since the parameter solved for is not algebraic, we also need the computer to plot the resulting curves. I use Mathematica for these tasks.

Because of the malleability of paper, it is often possible to construct curved models that do not conform to theory, but I feel that such models incorporate a kind of lie that even the eye of the untutored viewer can detect, and that designs founded in mathematics have a greater appeal, as they reveal that truth visually.

GORI.Node Garden is a physical and ambient data visualization as a network garden in which each plant is nourished by communication data. The network garden has plants with blossoms and roots that feed the data to the garden by “watering” when each plant vibrates, similar to how plants move in the wind.

Audiences are encouraged to participate by using instant messag­ing. They create communication data by “logging in,” “sending,” or “receiving” messages. When they log out, they are asked if they want to implement their chat communication in the garden. When the data enter the garden, a participant becomes a gardener and the data are recycled.

GORI.Node Garden proposes an alternative view of the network. “Gardening” emphasizes the intentional blurring of the distinctions between natural and man-made materials and “Gardening data” explains circular flow and the recycling of data.

Metaphors of nature are used here to represent that flow; chat communication is “a seed.” Identifying each plant with the seed is to “plant.” Pushing data into the installation from the database is “water­ing” and the database is a “water tin.”

These pieces are from a body of work entitled Emergent Codes. They are inspired by some recent technological and scientific innovations, including cellular automata, fractal geometry, complex systems, chaos theory, connectionism, Turing waves, and remote sensing. These exciting discoveries are creating remarkable, never-before-seen images of our world and the processes that create it. The catalyst for these broad changes in our understanding is the introduction and use of the digital computer and its ability to crunch complex calculations that were never before possible. As an artist, I am communicating my own personal vocabulary inspired by the artifacts of science. So it seems appropriate to use the computer as an art tool to discuss ideas that have come into being as a result of the computer.

All images exist within a wider context. Artists complete the context.

Quantum Qupids the juxtaposition of Baroque imagination and our current scientific envisioning of the quantum field mechanics. Our collective memory topology is the accumulation of past generations and the ideas they passed down to us. My experience today is the shifting planes of metaphors (past and present) which serve to create context.

“Invisible Threads–A Virtual Sweatshop in Second Life” is a mixed reality performance installation created by Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rothenberg. The project explores the growing intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies and real life commodities through the creation of a designer jeans sweatshop in the online, 3-dimensional world of Second Life (SL). Simulating a real life manufacturing facility that includes hiring Second Life “workers” to produce real world jeans sold for profit, the project provides an insider’s view into current modes of global, telematic production.

Using a just-in-time production process, customers in the real world are able to purchase their jeans in SL Linden dollars directly from the virtual manufacturer, Double Happiness Jeans. A microphone and web cam connected to a computer creates a live stream of customer orders into the virtual factory. The audio/video stream projected inside the factory enables SL workers to see each customer and hear their order. On the assembly line, the first worker starts the production process that involves loading cotton bales into the Jaquard loom. Once the fabric is made it moves down the assembly line through each machine. Each worker stationed at a machine is responsible for selecting the correct option based on the customer’s order, men’s or women’s size for example. The worker also has a limited time frame in which to press the correct button otherwise the assembly line stops and the order has to start over. At the end of the production process, the jeans go through the SL to real life (RL) “portal” resulting in an output from a large format printer. Some assembly required.

Adrift in the modern world, the new millennial citizen is held captive by technology whose slightest whim can fell empires (or inspire fits). Set upon by the digital hegemony, s/he finds the bit-wise facility of Turing’s and Babbage’s enfant terrible far too persuasive. This short piece arose out of an exercise to create a non-traditional countdown for a video reel. The actual countdown takes place sonically, descending from an octave interval to a major 2nd, while the digital video provides the title’s analog – humanity turning to noise.

“a text for the navigational age,” a 3D textual environment, is a reflection of my displacement in both physical and virtual space, and an attempt to expand the activity of reading and writing beyond the two dimensional.

I grew up in Orlando, Florida, home to four generations of my family. There, I navigated the city through its building facades, lamp posts, billboards, and mailboxes. When I moved to the West Coast in 1993, I had to comprehend the layout of Los Angeles in its totality. Not knowing the landmarks, I turned to the map. Here I was confronted with a different conceptualization of space: the view from above.

“a text for the navigational age” is about reconciling these two ways of understanding space at a time when the Internet has thrust the rapid dematerialization of space upon us. The reader/flaneur is invited to interact by moving within a textual body that is always present in one, two, and three dimensions.

I am interested in physical phenomena and human perception. In this piece, I explore the intersections of three different resonant systems. The first is mechanically resonant: the motor and the extension spring are tuned to resonate with each other. The second system is electrical: 2000 LEDs strobing at the resonant frequency of the spring. The third is the visual phenomenon of light resonating in tune with the motion of an object, which, through a human observer, is perceived initially as no motion at all.

The reversal of the strobing effect is interesting. Normally, strobing is used to take still images and make them appear as a moving object, such as in a movie reel. This is known as the “beta phenomenon” and is a fundamentally human perceptual effect. A computer can recognize every frame as a frozen object in its own right, but we mentally connect distinct elements together to create motion.

In order to reverse this effect, I use a rapidly moving object and initially strobe it to make it appear frozen in space. Why? Strobing a rapidly moving object can make it appear to be moving in almost any way one desires. Physics appears broken. In this case the climax becomes the fact that the strobes, occurring at different times in different locations on the spring, can make the spring appear to break into 12 parts and float separately in midair. Usually people do not initially believe that this is a physical object. Their perception of the world around them is altered.

My current project, Dig, explores the interplay between our industrial past, current development, and the natural world. The images posses a strong psychological undercurrent through both the iconography and the application of textural surface patinas, both physical and digital.

The images begin as rudimentary charcoal drawing that when photographed and reworked, become virtual landscapes. Elements and symbols reflecting loss, industrial development, childhood, decay, and disinterment are then worked into this terrain under layers of digital material. The resulting 360 degree landscape Flash panoramas were to be my original end point. However, I decided to rework the images further and inter them with a true physical barrier. So, the works were printed onto large pieces of cotton sateen fabric, adhered to wood, and coated with several layers of wax medium.

In the end, the final pieces reflect a rich combination of physical and digital layering. I consider both the 360 Panoramas and the works on cloth to be finished works. The two formats each distinguishing characteristics that make them unique, yet both possess this digital/analogue duality.

My prints are constructs of territories and borders, catalogs, and crowds. They became more personal when I returned to Southern California, where already expensive real estate increases in value daily, traffic is congested, neighborhoods are bursting at the seams, and different cultures and lifestyles are the rule and not the exception. I think of the print area as real estate. The objects and individuals
become crowds, populations, neighborhoods, and contained worlds. I view them as cultural portraits and visually percussive formal arrangements.

They are organized as both vistas and flatland, panoramas and page spreads, and consist of thousands of digital photographs, primarily of people, taken in specific locations. Some elements are obtained through web searches and scans.The process involves shooting over 200 photographs a day for several weeks in various locations. As I cut and paste the images together, I’m balancing digital and painterly aesthetics, allowing aliased rips and rough edges to be the drip and gesture of paint The obsessive activity of cutting, pasting, reducing, and combining hundreds or thousands of images together is done without a formla and permits radical redirections and changes in form, open to unexpected developments. My background as a painter influences the way I work digitally. In my studio projects, it can be the unintentional mark, the under-painting. or a subtractive process that resolves the image. Digital technology and installation are natural evolutionary steps, embracing accident, chance, and coincidence. Elements are easily rearranged, stacked. erased, enlarged, suspended, and ordered.

Over the past several years, my work has spanned photography, video, installation, and new media. The creation process is a combination of practical steps, intuitive decisions, and experiments with technology, media, and platform. As a painter, I found the additive and subtractive process, the unintentional action, often resolved the image. Digital media lend themselves to this approach, through their malleability, modularity, variability, and automation. In digital media and installation, elements can be rearranged, stacked, erased, enlarged, suspended, and ordered. Invention, and an engagement in the rapidly changing dialogue between media and culture, are fundamental components of the work.

Recently I have been working on the Habitat and Debris series, which present a database of people, their codes of dress, gesture, and artifacts. Collecting the material for Habitat involves shooting over 200 digital photographs per day in specific locations, usually for several weeks. My presence on the boardwalk, on the street corner, in the crowds takes on elements of a performance as I attempt to blend in, become invisible. Some people are unaware of the camera, others notice but ignore it, and still others are disturbed or curious about my intent.

The work presents a large array in an ambiguous flatland that flows visually with a percussive rhythm, read like hieroglyphs or text. The digitized images are individually traced and cut out in Photoshop and composed into a site-specific digital collage, consisting of between 1,000 and 3,000 separate files. Working with such a huge database at times promotes a rough-edged, painterly aesthetic as editing speed increases. At other times, it slows down into a mechanical, painstakingly exact activity. The challenge is striking a balance between an efficient production strategy and formula, and a more exploratory process that allows for change and discovery.

A robotic arm plays back hallucinated gestures from a machine learning system trained on my interactions with my phone, exploring issues of human/machine empathy and agency.

Media Mirror is an interactive video installation in which over 200 channels of live cable television are continuously arranged in real­time to form a mosaic representation of the person that stands in front of it.

The piece explores the bidirectional relationship each of us has with mass media. It attempts to illustrate how we are inexorably shaped by the media, while at the same time, how the media itself reflects the demands of our society. The piece is also simply meant to evoke an overwhelming sense of the sheer scale of mass media.

When no user is present, Media Mirror places itself into an autono­mous mode, in which the piece forms mosaics of one of the live channels. In effect, the mirror gets turned into the media itself.

I create machines that respond to and record physical forces within the natural environment. Specific mechanical devices are directly controlled by the movements and energies that they were designed to respond to, at a chosen site. The machines function to visually document the selected natural activity, continuously, over a period of time. The documentation, which is usually designed to be displayed in the form of a continuous line, is made to be seen entirely at once, to immediately reveal its complete history and progression to the viewer. In presenting these linear records, it is my goal that my machines achieve a relative and true representation of the specific activity and energy that they were designed to respond to. I consider that visual line to be more engaging than the device used to create it and to be more noticeable than the force of its origin. It is my hope that through this process of collecting and presenting a force’s history as a perceivable line, I can stimulate a genuine appreciation for the natural forces that created them, and the energy they possess.

Based on the novel of the same name by ltalo Calvino

This piece explores the synchronization and hybridization of media for the creation of a unified and balanced work of art. Jeffrey Treviño created Substitute Judgment as an autonomous solo multi-percussion work, inspired by his readings of philosophical inquiries into the ethics of Alzheimer’s Disease patients’ legal status as decision makers. Ross Karre created Metal Catalogue, a synchronized video response to Treviño’s work. Substitute Judgment presents four very simple compositions as one composition in which four different pieces interrupt each other. The piece focuses on the profound changes that come about by an apparently simple, even trivial change in priority. The goal of Metal Catalog is to create an entirely new piece that utilizes the hybrid of both media, live percussion and video. The concept for the video is derived from the concept of Substitute Judgment. Hyper-simultaneity guides the temporal construction of the imagery. A sectionalized formal structure, consisting of four seemingly disjunct cells of musical materials, is represented graphically by a catalog of metal objects. Comprised entirely of still photographs of decaying metal farm equipment, Metal Catalog displays images in motion through a variety of graphic manipulations. First, a moving collage appears as a backdrop for overlaid images whose perspective is twisted and turned in response to the resonance of the tam-tam. Next, the surprise introduction of a mechanical drum groove is represented with shifting and fading colored pencil drawings of the photographs. The materials gain more clarity in the next section, when the twisting images are transferred to a single-layered unity on the screen. At the entrance of the penetrating wood block, the audience flips quickly through the pages of the catalog while the sound of glass bottles evokes memories of images as they pass quickly by, twisting in and out of sight. The music and video permute these previous materials. Finally, a choice is made: The glass bottle remains as the decisive final sonic element, resting uneasily on the resonance of the tam-tam and the fading imagery of the metal collage.

“When Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Line created the term cyborg in 1960, short for cybernetic organism, the concept was a spunky way to think about conquering new frontiers in alien environments.” – Tyler Stallings

“The Cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. When boundaries are being transgressed and when fusions create new entities, then it is hard to discern between the natural and artificial, especially in today’s technology mediated society.” – Donna Harraway

My cyborgs appear so quietly you could hear a hawk’s pinion feathers rasp against an updraft of wavy hot air before they came upon you. Floating across the salt flats, they are husks-sharp, dry, weird, and eerie. They resonate as crackled memories of survivors who fled from fears of final conflict, seeking peace in a parched earth. Squeezed out of my own contradictions, they can stay alive in Death Valley, an ancient and elementally awesome place, a sanctuary of great majesty, refuge and inspiration.

I have innate joy in creating things that have never existed, and a horror that every “thing” manufactured masks displacement of vital life forces that become increasingly distanced from being. The sense of power and misery in this vulnerability is astonishing. On a bad day, I worry that my interactive work with computers will contribute in any way to the triumph of the undead and the unborn. On a good day, I look forward to hearing a rock talk back.

Someday, I would like to exhibit my cybertouch shells as they were originally intended to exist. They are life-sized, 30, virtual figures of light, and, at the same time, frozen gestures, literal songs, and 20 fictions. Until then…which could take years…I can tease you with print composites. They can be deconstructed as artifacts of unprecedented science, non-sequitors that look like really cool sci-fi movie stills.

The computer is more than a tool. It is a medium that transcends traditional boundaries between fact and fiction.

Centaur is a mythic metaphor suited to the fusion of identity in human-computer interaction. The centaur bridged the age of men and giants, as the cyborg now bridges the age of human and artificial intelligence. The cyborg in “Centaur” is a life-sized, 3D drawing imaginatively developed in the semi-immersive computer environment of the Caltech Workbench, then edited in standard software programs. Although entirely fictional, the alien centaur becomes hyper-real in context with high-tech computer composites of Death Valley, affording poignant speculation on the paradoxical nature of life on earth. This work would not have been possible a few years ago, yet it respects influences by great artists of the past millennium: Ansel Adams, Magritte, Picasso, and Severini in particular.

The eerie Centaur is as much a product of computer interaction as of my own action. The cyborg was created as a consequence of beta testing tangible tools that Steven Schkolne invented to work with his proprietary Surface Drawing system (a project fostered by the Caltech Multi-Res Modeling Group). The life-size, 3D drawing appeared as ribbons of light beamed from my fingers as I worked. Strokes were shaped by hand gesture and curvature, and could be erased by holding fingers in different positions. I could see compound strokes fluidly joined and modified in progress. This was fun, and astonishingly practical, yet I often developed the form without looking. That way I depended on kinesthetic drawing ability and could work faster than the computer-generated visual feedback image.

For more controlled results, I adjusted the tempo and complexity of freehand drawing to the processing speed of the computer motion-capture system. The computer simplified complex forms drawn too quickly. Ambidextrous sculptural drawing ability was fundamental to rotating and resizing forms with tongs held in one hand, while using the Cyberglove to draw with the other. The results are intriguing. Surface Drawing is responsive to spontaneous kinesthetic gesture in ways CAD programs are not. This is uniquely significant. Practical and esthetically functional forms of human-computer interaction should retain vital aspects of human touch.

The red figures are “cyber-touch shells,” created in virtual reality by petting actual human beings, head-to-toe. Flattened views of the originally life-sized, 3D forms are curious images of limbic kinesthetic experience. I have them spinning on Devil’s Racetrack in Death Valley, an elementally awesome place.