Tuesday night marked the beginning of the open lecture series organized by CIID and DKDS. The lecture was titled “It’s More Fun to Compute” and was given by The Product aka Dennis and Patrick aka our instructors of the past two weeks.
Speaking on the topic of computational design, they exhibited a variety of projects from across several disciplines while also discussing their own studio’s output. Listed below are some of my favorite examples of computational/procedural/generative projects from their lecture, plus some more that I stumbled upon over the past week. Enjoy!
Rat Wallpaper by Front
Using rats, flys, snakes, dogs and other animals, this design studio used natural processes to create a design element in their furniture. In this particular example a rat has been allowed to chew through sections of a sheet of wallpaper. A large piece of creating generative systems is learning how to use randomness in a controlled and meaningful way, which was certainly achieved through these animals. Most of the objects from Front’s animal series are functional, beautiful and make a great conversation piece for your home.
Tree Drawings by Tim Knowles
Another project using natural processes, British artist Tim Knowles created a series of images by fixing drawing utensils to the limbs of trees. Unlike the previous project (a functional piece of furniture), Knowles has decided to include a photo documenting the process as part of the final work. For a drawing that looks like a scribble, this is probably necessary. Although the title of the piece could provide enough context for the viewer to understand how the drawing was made, the accompanying photo really pulls the whole piece together and might even become more important than the drawing itself.
Golem by Jason Salavon
Although not in the presentation, this work by American artist Jason Salavon might best demonstrate Patrick’s sentiment that computational processes are often best suited for creating many variations in a short time. Golem is a presentation of 100,000 abstract paintings created by software authored by the artist.
Appeel by Richard The
Appeel is an art installation that uses a generative process which is also interactive. A sheet of round stickers is placed on a wall and people are encouraged to peel a sticker from the sheet and stick it someplace else. The sheet of stickers becomes a new, highly controlled composition created by negative space, while the orange circles become material for new and unforeseeable designs. This also reinforces the idea of interaction as a process.
Curated by Matt Pyke and musician Freeform, Advanced Beauty is “an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects… The films embrace unusual video making processes, the visual programming language Processing, high-end audio analysis and fluid dynamic simulations alongside intuitive responses in traditional cell animation. Each artist was given the same set of parameters to work within; to start, finish and exist within a white space, creating a seamless coherence, all sculptures sharing the same white environment.”
Cutting-edge HD-video-sound-sculptures created with software. From watching these short videos however, it is not clear how much is a direct result of the sound itself and how much of the action is predetermined. It will be interesting to see how these manifest as gallery installations which seems to be the next step in this ongoing project.
Since we have been working on a data visualization project with Processing, I thought this would be good to take another look at. Radiohead’s music video for “House of Cards” was created entirely by using software that processed data gathered by some sort of 3D-laser-scanning method called “geometric informatics.” Check out Google Code for a making-of documentary, interactive data visualizer and Processing source code w/ data.
Subservient Chicken & Biometric Butterflies by The Barbarian Group
A viral marketing campaign and an art installation, both from The Barbarian Group. I think these projects are a really great contrast of ways to use computational design. Lots more commercial projects on their website.
Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony
My favorite example from the lecture! I could not find a video though…
Record Player Drawings by Me (Adam)
A small self promotion - For this project I attached the arms of two turntables together using the hinges from a pantograph. The first turntable played a 12″ album while the second turntable spun a piece of paper on its plate with a pencil instead of a needle at the end of its arm. The result is a drawn spiral produced byone turntable in direct relation to the grooves in the vinyl being played by the other. Because of the needle skipping and deterioration in the sharpness of the graphite, a perfect copy of the record could not be produced, however the results were different every time and as unique and subtle as the grooves in a record.
The Science of Aliens by The Product with ART+COM
Lastly, work by Dennis and Patrick. As part of the Science of Aliens exhibit at the London Science Museum, their project was an interactive and dynamic alien world generated in real time. This installation had a bit of everything - game design, narrative storytelling, touchscreen interaction and education. By using computation and procedures, the alien world could progress on its own, change over time, invite interaction and tell a story without having a beginning and end.
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