[ code works ]

“I use programming as method of inquiry as programming enables me to construct hypothetical scenarios in order to test my premises or presumptions – similar to thought experiments. Although unlike thought experiments, a computer program simply performs whatever task it is programmed to do, without the freedom of interpretation or bias. Thus, a computer presents the strictly logical outcome of any premises in a given situation, where our intuitions may otherwise have deceived us. By reducing a concept to a logical system, it is also possible to extend that concept by removing or adding other premises. For example, remove the concept of a surface from the act of drawing, or extend the dimensions of the drawing surface into any arbitrary number of dimensions.”

A generative work made in response to Anna Madeleine’s as part of the project Re:.

Re: is a playful and experimental online project involving six young artists – Anna Madeleine, Benjamin Forster, Robbie Karmel, Luke Penders, Sarah Catherine Firth and Travis H Heinrich. Over seven months each artist will create five artworks – a total of thirty works. The artists will take turns each week presenting a new work. There’s only one rule; each new piece must reference the one produced the week before. Not intended as a site for complete and finished works, rather re: can be seen as a simple game that allows for the artists to play with the intersections of each of their individual practices.

Find out more and view some of the work here.

This work was created as part of the Amnesty International’s ARTillery Festival as part of the MasterPEACE exhibition. Artist’s involved were asked to make work in response to the story of an unfairly imprisoned individual at risk, people whose right to freedom is currently being campaigned for by Amnesty International.

Inscribed (Ko Aye Aung) is an explicit analogy of the process of degradation and loss that has been occurred by Ko Aye Aung. I do not know Ko Aye Aung. If it was not for Amnesty I would not even know his story. All knowledge of him was provided to me as a simple digital profile. Dot pointed and only nine hundred and eighty two words accompanied by a small portrait. His is a story that is singularly unique, however at the same time multiple and all too common. His is a story we never truly know, we never hear about, we are all distant from.

This video is made through a simple process.
Insert Ko Aye Aung’s digital profile, one letter at a time, into and over the code that makes up his JPEG portrait. Each frame of this video is a record of the degradation and loss incurred as each letter is added until at last all his profile is written into the image and his face is lost.

This work is part of an experimental series using computer programming as a means to ponder simple ontological propositions. The underlying premise of this system is Definition = The inscription of an underlying flow onto a surface. Definitions effect the flow that inscribes further definitions. For example, Mountains and Valleys are etched by the flow of the wind. Paper trails are sculpted by the flow of Capital. Things come into being momentarily, appear stable for a time, but eventually the tides shift.

Made using a simple algorithmic process that reinterprets video input sourced from a computer’s webcam placed in front of the television. The process mimics the slit-scan method that televisions use to render received signals as perceivable images.

The Process:

for each new frame of video.
++ for(int jj=0; jj<4; jj++) {
++++ int x = ((ix+(jj*4))%w)*dw;
++++ int y = (iy+(jj*4))*dh;
++++ for(int i=0; i ++++++ for(int j=0; j +++++++ int t = (x+i)+((y+j)*width);
+++++++ colour(video.pixels[t]);
+++++++ draw_point(x+i,y+j);
++++++ }
++++ }
++ }
++ ix++;
++ if(ix>=16) {
++++ iy++;
++++ if(iy>=4) iy =0;
++++ ix=0;
++ }

Inspired by Jean Arp’s Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance). This video work is generated by randomly rearranging and moving image fragments depicting the Belconnen bus interchange (now demolished). Artworks like our built environment are not static they live and breath, come into being and disappear again. All of my digital works rely heavily on notions of chance, although ironically there is no chance within a computer. Everything is deterministic.

One of my first experiments using computer programming to ponder ontological propositions. This system can be best described as the tracing of simple interactions onto a visual surface. There are numerous particles each assigned to be positive or negative. Each of theses particles effect the motion of its neighbours. Particles are repulsed by others of the same polarity, and attracted to their opposites, similar to magnets. Very simple interactions when traced, produce complex and varied structures.