prosthetic knowledge

Artist Rob Sherwood

Rob Sherwood’s work is about finding a depth of perception, literally and metaphorically, in a flat-screened world. He considers himself a painter but his practice has always allowed some time for conducting experiments with various lens based media.

Attracted by the way digital technology blurs boundaries between physical and virtual space, his paintings can be seen as taking the grid for a visual metaphor of human cognition. Whether each square is interpreted as a pixel, cell, bit or atom is consequential to it being first and foremost just a painted mark.

Recently he has begun translating his aesthetic sensibilities and theoretical interests into objects. As with his grid paintings, these works tamper with an apparently rigid system and find creative space in a subjective interference. The suggestion is that models which appear strict or sterile can combine meaningfully with subjective fields of feeling, whether in the algorithms of the internet or those of a painted pattern.

[text taken from Frederica Schiavo Gallery]

The artist also has a Tumblr blog here

The Art of Projection Mapping: John Ensor Parker at TEDx NYU Poly

Interesting 15 minute video discusses, from an artist’s point of view, a brief history of technology, art, and culture, and how that leads into the practice of Projection Mapping. Video embedded below:

As our knowledge of the natural world exponentially increases, so does our perception of reality. Scientific and Technological developments affect us as individuals and as a collective species. At TEDxNYU Poly, John Ensor Parker discusses how the art media of projection mapping can be used to generate needed dialogue on the topic.

Manfred Mohr: one and zero 

Exhibition currently at the Carroll Fletcher Gallery, London, on Computer Art pioneer Manfred Mohr, which runs until the 20th of December:

All my relations to aesthetical decisions always go back to musical thinking, either active in that I played a musical instrument or theoretical in that I see my art as visual music… I was very impressed by Anton Webern’s music from the 1920s where for the first time I realized that space, the pause, became as important to the musical construct as the sound itself. So there are these two poles, one and zero.

Manfred Mohr

one and zero, Manfred Mohr’s first solo exhibition in London, presents a concise survey of his fifty-year practice. Harnessing the automatic processes of the computer, Mohr’s work brings together his deep interest in music and mathematics to create works that are rigorously minimal but with an elegant lyricism that belie their formal underpinnings. Through drawing, painting, wall-reliefs and screen-based works, the show examines the artist’s practice through the prism of music and the idea that what is left out is as important as what remains.

Beginning in 1969, Mohr was one of the first visual artists to explore the use of algorithms and computer programs to make independent abstract artworks.  His early computer plotter drawings - when he had access to one of the earliest computer driven plotter drawing machines at the Meteorology Institute in Paris - are delicate, spare monochrome works on paper derived from algorithms devised by the artist and executed by the computer.  P198aa (1977-79) is an elegant rhythmic composition of nine randomly rotated and cut cubes that hints at multi-dimensional space.

More about the show can be found at the gallery’s website here

Images above were taken from a Flickr set put together by Paul Prudence, which can be found here

One of the artist’s featured in my Algorists piece for Rhizome, which can be found here

The Art of Nandan Ghiya

Artist creates works using vintage portraits with physical modern-day digital distortions.

More info and examples of the artist’s work can be found at Ocular here and Galerie Paris-Beijing here

Uncomposed (after Titian after Giorgione) by Georgie Roxby Smith 

Renaissance art piece composed as contemporary New Media machinima, a 21st Century Venus - watch below:

Uncomposed (after Titian after Giorgione) from Georgie Roxby Smith on Vimeo.

3D machinima, video, found image, found sound

Made specifically for Composite at Gallery One Three Uncomposed (after Titian after Giogione) deconstructs Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, itself a composite, the landscape and sky being completed by Titian following Giogione’s death in 1510. The work was a landmark of its era, reflecting a new shift in modern art with the inclusion of a female nude at its centre. Employing three-dimensional computer graphics and elements of Giorgione’s original masterpiece, Roxby Smith replaces his stylised renaissance figure with a fantasised digital body transplanted into an augmented hyper real landscape. In the likeness of her present day artist, the 21st Century Venus will not lie still for her voyeurs, obstinately returning the male gaze from her new digital paradigm, Sleeping Venus awakes.

Bad Trip

Interactive game world by Alan Kwan is a trip into the artist’s subconscious - scattered around the world are ‘memory cubes’ which, when approached, display recordings of moments of the artist’s real life who mounted a video camera to his glasses. Watch the video below:

Bad Trip: Navigate My Mind from KwanAlan on Vimeo.

Bad Trip is an immersive interactive system that enables people to navigate my mind using a game controller.

Since November 2011, every moments of my life has been logged by a video camera that mounts on my eyeglasses, producing an expanding database of digitalized visual memories. Using a custom virtual reality software, I design a virtual mindscape where people could navigate and experience my memories and dreams. The mindscape grows continually as fresh memories and dreams come in.

The artist is interviewed about the work at Gamescenes, which you can read here

Paintings of Kristoffer Zetterstrand 

Artist whose work (since 2002) combines space, perspective, historical fine art and the presentation of video games:

I work with painting. For some years I have experimented with virtual still lifes, often in the form of stage design in which I explore how two-dimensionality (and painting) relates to computer-generated 3D worlds. I am interested in visual spaces created online, in computer games and 3D programmes, and especially in what happens when the illusion is shattered and the underlying construction emerges -like when there is a bug in a computer game. I am interested in visual failures, which I try to use in my painting. Among other things, I have produced paintings based on the landscapes that you can see only if you are “dead” in the online game Counter-Strike, and paintings with motifs created by crashed landscape generators used in film and computer game production. Presently my work process is like this: I start by sketching the motif in 3D on the computer, where I can move the scene about, rearrange pictorial elements, redirect the light, reposition the camera, and so on. I sculpt the architecture and the various parts of the environment and dress the parts in different textures, which I often sample from images of my own earlier paintings, from pictures I have found on the net and screen dumps from computer games. I also use a lot of material from my art archives, which comprises some sixty-thousand paintings. While working with a sketch on the computer, the simpleness of the tools means that I can follow my impulses and try out new angles, change backdrops and pictorial elements, redirect the light, rearrange the shadows, etc. For me, the 3D programme is a tool that I use intuitively when I construct my motifs. The scenes are often influenced by the dramatic composition of computer games, where familiarity with some kind of mythology is essential in order to play the game, in a similar way as an artist relates to art history. That the end result is painting is a prerequisite of my work. The physical aspect of painting and the space it allows for improvisation and painterly reformulations of the motifs are the most important parts of the process. You could say that when it comes to the painterly part of my work process, I improvise on a theme that I have determined on the computer. 

Artist’s website here

Vincent Van Gogh - Colourblind? 

Japanese scientist posts a theory on his Tumblr blog, asada0, tests an idea that came from a stimulated colourblind experience with the artist’s work:

The other day, I experienced the “Color Vision Experience Room” at the event of the Hokkaido Color Universal Design Organization (HCUDO), where I had invited to speak. The event’s main objective was to educate the public about the diversity of color vision which exists in our society. The event also sought to promote the idea that any time we make choices about colors, we should take this diversity into account.

The “Color Vision Experience Room” uses illumination filtered by an optical filter - providing a modified spectrum of light. In this room,  the person who has normal color vision sees color the same as the person who has protan or deutan color vision. These types of color deficiency mean that certain color combinations are difficult to differentiate. I was impressed by the effort and thought that had made this room a reality.

I was able to view various items in the room, and it turned out that experiencing modified color vision by the naked eye had a stronger impact than experiencing it on a computer display in simulation. This was a revelation to me.

There were prints of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings in the room. Under the filtered light, I found that these paintings looked different from the van Gogh which I had always seen. I love van Gogh’s paintings and have been fortunate to view a number of the originals in various art museums. This painter has a somewhat strange way to use color. Although the use of color is rich, lines of different colors run concurrently, or a point of different color suddenly appears. I’ve heard it conjectured that van Gogh had color vision deficiency.

However, in the van Gogh images seen in the color vision experience room, to me the incongruity of color and roughness of line had quietly disappeared. And each picture had changed into one of brilliance with very delicate lines and shades. This was truly wonderful experience.

It goes on to experiment and examine the idea, (above, the images on the right are the originals) and the author insists that this is purely a theory.

You can read more of the essay here

Live2D 

Japanese software technology turns 2D drawing into interactive 3D content for use with touchscreen devices - via DigInfo (video embedded below):

Live2D, developed by Cybernoids, is the world’s first drawing technology to enable 3D rendering of 2D images. This technology supports a variety of portable consoles and smartphones, and Live2D is already being utilized for games that take advantage of the unique characteristics of hand drawn artwork.

“In 3D, the unique attractions of 2D art like Osamu Tezuka’s can’t be rendered properly. But with Live2D, we’ve worked to enable smooth 3D motion using entirely the original 2D drawings. So, this system makes the graphics appear exactly as the creator intended.”

“When the face turns sideways, you can show perfectly how the eyelashes and eyes move. You can also use the tools to work more easily and efficiently. This can be done in all kinds of ways, with all kinds of emphasis, depending on what the creator wants to do. This technology is an extension of drawing, so it works best if the creator has a good artistic sense.”

More at DigInfo here

Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs To You 

Large-scale solo exhibition which was on at Japan’s Mori Art Museum of one of Asia’s leading female artists. Her works are sculptural, with both natural and technological forms - looks interesting:

Since the 1990s, Lee Bul has built an international career as one of the leading contemporary artists from Asia. Her oeuvre is dominated by sculptures that demonstrate a mastery of materials and techniques, including her celebrated Cyborgs and Anagrams series, hybrid machine-and-organic forms referencing critical theory as well as dystopian cinematic worlds; karaoke “pods” that evoke space capsules for eternal sleep; and glittering, spectral gures and cityscapes that seem to be falling into ruin. For over twenty years, it could be said that Lee, whose practice has spanned her home country’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy, has been on a quest for an elusive something . the ultimate physical form perhaps, or the ideal society. While showcasing her major works in the four sections “Ephemeral Presence,” “Beyond Human,” “Utopia and Dreamscape” and “From Me, Belongs to You Only,” in the “Studio” section this exhibition will present the drawings and models that also form the font of her ideas. The subtitle “From Me, Belongs to You Only” is also a message from Lee: her attempt to find the “something” for which she is constantly searching in a personal relationship with each individual viewer. Come and experience that message for yourself in the spaces at “Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only.”

More Here

The Paintings of William Betts 

Artist creates various series of works employing familiar digital reproduction styles, but all are painted with acrylic on canvas. The above works were completed between 2007 to 2011.

Click on the photos for larger versions to see the details.

More of the artist’s website here

McKnight Artist Fellows: Visualizing Artists’ Careers 

Visualizing data from artist’s careers (publications, exhibitions, years etc) into animated information visualizations:

In the 30th year of the McKnight Artist Fellowship program, we wanted to see what the artists had been up to. We used data from résumés to create diagrams showing the professional histories of 120 amazing artists, each one as distinct as the individual artists’ careers.

More Here [Via the highly recommended roomthily]