Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Southampton Solent University
Nebula Video
Russell Richards, along with seven other digital artists, was chosen for the Digital Art Challenge. The call was for works that explored the theme of “Interactions in Art, Design and Science”. The project Nebula is a self-generating application that, slowly, over the course of many hours creates nebulous gas clouds of colour emulating the creation of real nebulae. The format was then converted into a time-lapse video to accommodate the display at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The first generation of Nebula was accepted for the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomenon conference in Chicago 2005. The Nebula project was featured in the Cyberspace Gallery at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. This version, stimulated by the Digital Design Challenge call, included redesigned black pixels that delete out some of the colours in the image and thus enable the nebula to develop continually over longer periods. The output is thus more three-dimensional and more nebula-like than the original.
The display was viewed by 16, 000 visitors over the two days of the event (V&A’s recorded statistics) resulting in considerable impact being obtained by the work.
The successful entry to this year’s Digital Design Challenge follows Richards’ previous success last year with a project entitled AI_AT, a self-generating music/graphic application as a homage to Alan Turning.
