4. Software Art: Michael Takeo Magruder

Data Flower (Prototype I) - an internal view of a digital blossom

Michael Takeo Magruder is an artist and researcher based in the Kings College Visualization Lab. His work and research is devoted to exploring digital media, networks, and cultures. Data Flower (Prototype I) is an internet-based work, that take images from Flickr that have been tagged with 'flower' and then applied via algorithm to the modeling software that then creates this cycle of artificial flower growth and decay. 

The work Data_Plex(economy) uses real-time data about financial markets to construct three-dimensional renderings of data via geometric shapes. It creates a realtime landscape and visualization of the flux of capital, the stock exchange,  active during trading time and then silent when the market closes.

4. Software Art: boredomresearch (TM)

 Lost calls of cloud mountain whirligigs, screenshot daytime, Custom Software, Computer, TFT Screen, 2009

boredomresearch is a project/collaboration of artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith from Southampton UK. Their artworks are software/computer-based and explore ideas about biological forms in nature, and how they change and evolve over time. All their work is computer-generated, and lives both online as well as through the DAM gallery in Berlin/Cologne. Their works range from computer-generated print work (c-prints) to evolving software run on custom-made screens, as well as works that only live online and can be interacted with, such as a wishing tree, or the aspiration storm. In the above image, "whirligigs" transform and generate biologically as time passes over a craggy landscape, changing lights and shapes, as well as colors. 

Sound Artist: Joseph Hoffman

Artist Joseph Hoffman, "Write Me Some Lines"

"Three different audio tracks travel through individual speakers randomly moving from one speaker to another throughout the installation. Some of the speakers are blown out and damaged causing erratic vibrations. The installation plays a 45 minute loop with a catalogue of several different blues songs with breaks in between each song. Each blues song is paired with abstract sounds"

Sound Artists: Russell Frehling

This video ... "illustrate[s] the process of fishing for resonant frequencies inherent in the architecture; a technique passed down by Russell Frehling, one of the many artists whose work is included in the show.

In his site-specific installation entitled Bass Soundfield Russell Frehling works with ambient waveforms extracted from the very highest parts of the audible spectrum: in effect, dissociating this sound material from its familiar context and experiential cues. What does remain are these remarkably ethereal bits that interact with the room in a captivating but confounding way."

Research, Video Artist: Callum Cooper

Paradoxical Plane (Excerpt) from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Full Circle from Callum Cooper on Vimeo.

Callum Cooper is an artist from London. He distinguishes between artist and filmmaker - and the video "Full Circle" is actually for a fashion label - but I find it interesting that there are relationships between his sculptures and his videos. The motion of the camera is really enticing visually and the way one views spaces and plane, especially in "Paradoxical Plane." He shows different points of view in a way that really has you questioning, how did he shoot this video? how much of it is edited? It also gives you the notion of going in 360. 

Research, Video Artist: Len Lye

Len Lye (1901 - 1980) was one of the first artists to experiment with film and animation as an artistic process. He was also a kinetic sculptor. "Free Radicals" was created by scratching into black film stock. "A Colour Box" was actually made for the British General Post. I like how he uses a direct process with the film and is able to create these abstract, but musical and actually quite tangible animations paired with music.His work is a great reference for students who are just starting out in animation, and to discuss the pairing of music and sound. It is also a good example of how one can manipulate physical film by hand, and really explore how many ways it can be altered and changed in a playful manner.

Homework #7 (1.): Scanner Artists/Artists who use Scanners

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor is an artist who uses scanners (and photoshop) to make her highly surreal/fantastical imagery. She collects objects, tin types, various flora, etc, scans them, and then combines them via layers in photoshop until they have been taking completely out of context into her own world. Many of these images recollect notions of memory and nostalgia, despite how fantastical they are and futuristic in their layering. Much of it maybe has to do with the antiquarian photographs she uses that give her photos that "old" look, making it seem out of sync with how highly digital her works are. However, I think it's interesting how she appropriate her found images and objects to the point where they are unrecognizable beyond their purpose in her images themselves. They also create narratives that interweave and interrupt our ideas of what happens usually in these photographs - reminding us of childhood stories, etc.

Leanne Eisen is an artist based in Toronto, ON. She created these artworks using a flatbed scanner, experiementing with different surfaces - these were made with the surfaces of CDs and DVDs, "introducing the digital storage medium back into the scanning process." The surfaces create a reflection that then become an abstract shape and form against the stark blackness of her scanned images. I like how they remind me of flattened prints or abstract paintings, but are digital, reflected scans.The surface also gives the scan a strange sense of depth, and the light reflected gives it a very digital "technological" range of colors - how we imagine technology to look like in a way - in a physical sense. 

Homework #5: (4.) 2 Artists who use Photography

1. Geoffrey H. Short

Geoffrey H. Short is a photographer based in Auckland, New Zealand. The first two are from his series, Towards another (Big Bang) theory (2009). He stages explosions using a mix of gunpowder and fossil fuels and then captures them on camera giving them an isolated tone that lingers between "terror and sublime." You can read more on his blog.

2. Joschi Herczeg and Daniele Kaehr

Joschi Herczeg and Daniele Kaehr work with pyrotechnics that connect to the camera to capture light explosions - using the explosions as the material of the works and playing with chance. "The explosions take place in a domestic setting to play upon feelings of anxiety and unrest" (We Find Wildness). 

Homework#5: (1.) Digital Artist, Ruud Van Empel

World #36, cibachrome print, 2010.

 Reflection, archival pigment print, 105 x 150 cm, 2010

Theater #2, cibachrome print, 2010

Ruud Van Empel (b. 1958) is a Dutch artist, based in the Netherlands. He has been working with Photoshop since the early 90's; his photographs are composited from many different images he has personally taken both in and out of the studio. In this interview, he talks about the notion of "re-creating a better reality" through his methodical process. By using parts and pieces of photographs in such a way, Van Empel renders a real environment that is slightly off-kilter somehow, eerily imperfect. In terms of photography, he is taking concepts of light and space and making them his own, making his photographs somewhat painterly in how he creates compositions and subjects. He is also interested in innocence, and photographs from his own childhood.

(2) New Media Artist: ZIMOUN

Zimoun : 216 prepared dc-motors, filler wire 1.0mm, 2009 / 2010 from STUDIO ZIMOUN on Vimeo.

Zimoun : 186 prepared dc-motors, cardboard boxes 60x60x60cm, 2010. from STUDIO ZIMOUN on Vimeo.

Zimoun (b. 1977) is a self-taught artist, based in Bern, Switzerland. I consider his work new media because of its incorporation of mechanical sound, movement, and architectural/spatial elements (he has also collaborated with architects in his work). While the materials he uses are often more industrial or mechanical, they are used to create "sound sculptures" that have an effect that is opposite to the formal simplicity of his works. On the contrary, Zimoun's sculptures and installations have a chaotic sound effect that amplifies pattern and structure within his objects. At the same time, the works are minimal in form - creating a sense of play within the works.

I also think it is interesting that while the materials are industrial and mechanical in form (and the installations with boxes are architectural/modern) - combined with their sound and movement they appear to be more organic and have natural repetition as opposed to the patterns of machinery. They hum, chaotically moving back and forth or side to side, like animals or insects in nature.The motors allow wires to move frantically, beating the surface and twisting around - cardboard boxes, basic in material and shape, become houses for moving ping pong balls, rattling various sounds and at different pitches. One particular installation of the boxes exists as a curved wall, a barrier of sound perhaps. Zimoun's work embodies the idea of mechanical versus organic, intertwining the two ideas into a different world of its own - an aspect, I believe, that is seen often in new media works. Imitations of nature and our lives in mechanical forms that ask us to observe closer, and listen deeply.

There will be an exhibition opening of his work at bitforms gallery this Thursday (February 2nd)