Projection at VOLTA NY

My first ever generative animation piece, Music is Math, is part of a curated series of films called ‘Projection’, devised by Culture Shock Marketing in partnership with Vimeo to be screened during VOLTA NY in March.  I’m also residing presently in NY for the next few weeks

The Projection Vimeo page is here.

“‘Digital’ or ‘New Media’ art (Computer graphics, Computer animation, the Internet, Interactive technologies, Generative art, Information art, Video art, Robotics and Bio technologies) is often defined through its opposition to ‘Old Media’ art (traditional painting, sculpture etc).
The PROJECTiON initiative views and presents work that has undergone computer/human interaction processes in direct lineage to its cultural predecessors, showing that an expanded digital toolset can lead to an expansion of formal concerns and impulses that can be traced back throughout the canon of art history.”

 

Metamorphosis and beyond…

It’s nice to be able to celebrate the 300,000+ plays on Vimeo of my generative animation piece Metamorphosis, and tell of where else it has been, and going to.

I’ve actually lost track of the requests I’ve had for it, for festivals, screenings, private use etc, and so many kind comments and emails, from Planetariums, Churches, even from people dying from cancer using it as therapy.

Alas I just don’t have the time to submit to every festival that requests it, or maybe I’m lazy.  They usually have to keep badgering me before I give in.  Two such recent screenings were as an installation at the Edinburgh Film Festival and at the Athens Video Art Festival.

Metamorphosis has proved more popular than anything else I’ve done.  It’s been my ‘big hit’. I often contemplate this.  Maybe because it’s not ‘too’ abstract, the eternal symbolism of the Butterfly, coupled with a generative animation concept that mirrors the cycle of life and death, and the potent atmosphere from the Boards of Canada soundtrack.

Anyway, it seems fitting that I should bring its journey to an ‘end’ by designing a real time, interactive version, for iPad.  Technically more challenging than my Eyegasms and Supernova, but I feel I have to do it.

It will also bring an end to this chapter of my generative animation work, before trying out other things, I’m already prototyping and brainstorming some very different and ambitious projects

p.s. all my generative apps for iPad (Eyegasm, Supernova) are getting updated for VGA projection, with added speed & color settings.  I’m also updating Zio at the minute for iOS 4 – which will also have VGA support!

Generative Animation Exhibition at Art Basel, Switzerland.

My agent, Culture Shock Marketing (CSM), have secured a partnership with VOLTA6 – a highly respected and renowned art show in Basel, Switzerland and through this partnership will present my work in a site-specific animation in the show venue, the VOLTA LOUNGE.

This is my Exhibition page, and this is The Venue.

Here’s the Flyer.

Wednesday, June 16th through Sunday, June 20th.

Supernova

(Vimeo)

(YouTube)

Demo video (Music by Vangelis) of my new app ‘Supernova’, coming soon for iPad, an animated real time visualizer of exploding stars and nebulae.

App features:
- Watch stellar visuals in deep space as they slowly expand and contract.

- Based on a pioneering generative animation system by award winning digital artist & programmer Glenn Marshall.

- Complex algorithms continuously generate an infinite variety forms, patterns and motion.

- Perfect as visuals for any kind of music.

- iPad HD graphics quality.

- Inspired by Hubble telescope style photography and Turner paintings.

- Ideal as a cosmic, meditative ‘Aquarium’ for the home.

- Amazing as wallpaper art.

- Use pinch and touch gestures to freely move, zoom and rotate.

- Shake iPad to regenerate random colours.

- Visit the website to see galleries and demo video.

“The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths, of exquisite interrelationships, of the awesome machinery of nature.” Carl Sagan.

Painting with Code

These are just some early experiments from my new Processing algorithms I’m developing, which I also used in my Vimeo Ident.

I’ll explain more in future posts as I develop this, but my inspiration comes from abstract vector art you see almost everywhere these days.  I want to create a suite of algorithms that automatically generate complex natural, painted brush work and free hand drawn lines – which can then be animated.

At the minute it’s quite random and abstract, but my goal is to create a generative art technology that can produce natural, organic landscapes with flowing painted strokes, and/or solid geometric shapes.