OFFF and ‘generative art’

A couple weeks back from OFFF in Lisbon and the head is still spinning from all the mind-melting stuff I saw there. I’d promised myself I’d blog about it and, well…here it is.

We landed in Lisbon a day early, to discover the city and stock up on sun and grilled fish before the whole thing kicked off. Seriously looking forward to the conference, I was hoping to be as inspired as I’d been at Flash On The Beach 08.


Erik Natzke and his dynamic paintings had really opened a whole new form of graphic art to me and I was hoping to see more stuff like that.

Little did I know that the guy whose seriously class tattoos I was staring at on the plane was none other than…Joshua Davis, scheduled to speak at OFFF…

Had I spent a tittle less time pushing the pixels the last few years, and a little more time looking for inspiration from the guys who’ve made it in the international design scene..I might have come across one of the many photos of this rockstar of interactive design…and would have stared a little less…or a little more…More importantly, I would have known that this good mate of Natzke’s has a very similar approach to ‘generative art’.

In short, both of them develop custom drawing tools in Flash/ActionScript (traditionally used for building animated websites) which they then use to produce art.

Where Natzke tends to create live drawing platforms, where animated graphics are produced semi-randomly as he paints with his mouse cursor, Davis seems to focus on creating matrices which arrange, randomly, graphics he has pre-produced.

Where Natzke’s coolest work – in my humble opinion – takes the form of video in which we witness the graphics unfurl to music..Joshua Davis lets his matrices run wild until he likes the look of a given static frame, occasionally tweaking the programming to see what the difference might produce. Which he then exports and uses as a basis for static graphic art which is then used across a multitude of media..from stained glass to duvet covers!

Anyway..if you’re in any way curious about these 2 fantastic artists, just check out their sites!
There’s also plenty of stuf on Flickr, youtube and vimeo.


Does every aspect of a piece of art need to be rooted in intent to truly be art?
What place do programming and randomness occupy in the creative process?
Is Flash a website-building tool or a tool-box for creating matrices?
What is the seperation point between interface navigation and artwork creation?


The experimental and playful methodoly that these guys share goes well beyond questioning conventions.
It rips the hole out of them beyond recognition, and only hints at possible answers. For artists and for designers, but also for the less computer-literate.

Consider this brazilian site I came across on FWA: www.devozasuaimaginacao.com.br
Clearly influenced by the work of this new generation of artists, it allows site visitor to paint with their mouse (movement and color choice)..and their voice (intensity)!
The (mixed) results are shared on the website and on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/avozqueeuqueroter)

Now don’t get me wrong. Most of them have the aesthetic value of.. the usual user generated content…
But at the very least this site outlines the direction that interactivity is taking online.
The democratisation of audio-visual technologies – on and offline – as well as people’s convergence to online networks and collaboration had produce youtube and the like. Transforming what people consume online and how they consume it.


It strikes me that there’s probably something very relevant in this co-occurence of new developments in non-traditional artistic collaboration and non-traditional navigation.
As we start to notice the democratisation of generative art and interfaces controled by webcams and mics..it’s clear that the web is undergoing yet another transformation. As website navigation becomes increasingly sensorial, the line between browsing and creating content increasingly becomes increasingly blurred. And the conventions of tomorrow are anyone’s guess…

 

Links

Erik Natzke:
His Journal
More stuff

Joshua Davis:
His Studio
His Blog
Once Upon A Forest

Webcam navigation:
hrp.com & hrp.clusta.com

Example of 3D hologram:
http://www.nissangooddecision.com/