topography of the psyche
link to project page on my website
I have a whole bunch of ongoing projects, many of which I have been working on for a decade or more. This is how I like to work. They are always works in progress and I release material from the state they are in occasionally. Here is the link to the project page on my website for topography of the psyche. The images you see below are 'snapshots' taken in 2013.
I like to develop different design/art strategies/architectures/algorithms to reveal aspects of psyche. This project uses the iconic 'heightfield' in computer graphics as the departure point. Love old-school computer graphics - that's right, it's all about Tron (and I'm not even joking). All of the vertices (the places where lines meet) have been placed by hand by me in a drafting program. I am still employing an algorithm - it is still generative art - although it is a human-generated algorithm. In other words, the results (the painting or music) is determined by a formula or defined architecture that is embodied by the author and therefore implemented by direct gesture (ie. painting) rather than implemented as machine code (as awesome as that is). No random number generators were used - that is the point. It is our own human 'randomness' or arbitrary behaviour that determines the form of the material. It is the kind of randomness that you get when you say, 'I am going to make this random'. Whatever it is that you have in mind that makes it random puts you in a state, opens a channel through which living presence may be transmitted and communicated in art, without being subject to the distortions of intention (such as willful composing - this is certainly inspired by John Cage). Its a kind of mundane task. - this creates a more direct channel to state of being.
I am fascinated by the designs and forms we create when engaged in mundane tasks and how 'readable' the resulting configurations are. You can tell a lot about a person, what they are thinking, what kind of person they, mood, personality, even what was going on that day - and that's just the beginning. I am not interested in doing control and surveillance work here (ie. 'profiling'). I am not as much interested in digging into people's personalities as I am in depicting different aspects of them in a slightly formalized way. I also want to have ***FUN*** with this and nothing screams fun like 'slightly formalized' but anyways, prepare yourself to discover amazing and delightful whimsicalities abounds.
Once these forms have been obtained as paintings, audio recordings, data sets, *then* the material may be subjected to all of the algorithmic/mathematical processes imaginable in order to deconstruct, evaluate, examine, and transform the material. Is it all real or imagined? It doesn't matter. What I am presenting here is essentially the 'raw data' as artwork. So it is a psychic reading without the reading - its just the crystal ball and that's it, sorry. But there are so many ways to look into that crystal ball or in this case, clumpagizations.
Like many of my other projects, the output for this project occupies many different media - audio art, computer graphics, software, images, installation, animations, videos, text, research - a full bunch project.
Start with t-shirts (they're fun, I like them and they're great), prints(fun, easy, delightful, also great), digital images, giclee prints(archival and for framing and great), and a large scale acrylic painting (3m x 1.5m) all available here.
Anyways, as mentioned earlier, I'm still working on this project and I have many plans, including interactive software - both online through my website and in a live venue. Its all about the heightfields.
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