Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Bournemouth University
Lost Calls of Cloud Mountain Whirligigs
Originality.
Smith and Isley (boredomresearch) created a virtual world, running in real-time, to research new possibilities inherent in computational technologies. The use of dynamic computer modelling combined with poetic rendering, pseudo-astrological cycles, emergent properties and generative processes extend existing forms of digital arts practice. This artwork was one of four new media works selected by an expert advisory panel including: Paul Hobson (Director, Contemporary Art Society), Sarah Fisher (Chair, FACT), Gavin Delahunty (Head of Exhibitions and Displays, Tate Liverpool) for Current: an Experiment in Collecting Digital Art, Preston, which “celebrated innovative and creative use of new media technology” The Guardian.
Significance.
Following the initial presentation curator Domenico Quaranta selected this artwork for the EXPANDED BOX, Arco, Madrid, to show how “new ways of addressing vital questions” with technology are modifying “the way in which we make art and even the very notion of art itself”. In addition it was selected for Uncontainable:Broken Stillness ISEA2011, Istanbul, reviewed in Digital Creativity “With boredomresearch’s generative programs making creatures (Whirligigs)...the landscape tradition of painting and photography is given a time based movement outside of the linear film”. Subsequently, the artwork was acquired by the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, Istanbul, Turkey.
Rigour.
Isley and Smith investigated the potential for generative techniques to challenge our notion of a final immutable image in art. Isley’s research initially considered proposed pattern forming mechanisms in Lepidoptera – implemented with novel autonomous compositing of pattern units in the computer. Working with Smith, the research then examined how to apply and implement artificial behaviours in code to extend the language of static image making. A finite state machine approach to artificial intelligence used in computer games was employed – extending animation as an augmentation of the still image itself.
