Void Setup: Project Site

Timescapes (36 & 63)
36. Rather than paint pictures of landscapes, I capture the corporeal essence of nature
63. Photographing them preserves their historical timelines

This sketch implements a digital interpretation of slit scan photography.  Using a webcam, I compose and image of a landscape outdoors.  I then record the colors of the center vertical column of pixels twice a second.  This yields a data set of colors of the exact same excerpt of the landscape over a long duration (from 6-24 hours).  The columns of pixels are then stitched together horizontally to result in a 70+ foot image I call a timescape.

Weather Symphony  (14 & 57)
14. Building layer upon layer – balancing color, tone, depth, and motion – is similar to creating a symphony
57. Equally important to this work are the ‘big picture’ and the ‘little things’

This sketch is a data visualization of one year of weather.  I use Wunderground’s API to collect hourly readings (over the course of a year) of six common elements of weather; temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, wind direction, and precipitation.  To display the results, each element is visualized separately but follows the same process.  Each day is divided into 24 hours.  Each hour is represented as a vertex of a circle, like a clock.  Instead of forming a perfect circle, the vertex’s location is then shifted inward or outward from the circle’s center based on value relative to the median.  The result is an imperfect circle that fluctuates over time.

Art Machine (74 & 37)
74. The viewer leaves with the art after viewing it
37. I can capture the compression of time and history through abstraction and metaphor

This sketch is an interactive installation created for a gallery space.  The simple interface allows the viewer to participate in the piece via webcam.  The viewer begins and ends the experience with little information as to what is happening.  Upon ending the interaction, the machine prints out an image for the viewer of and about their experience.

Serape (91 & 41)
91. I have always been drawn toward patterned surfaces, and particularly textiles in which pattern is inherent
41. Teetering towers of hamburgers, drippy stacks of syrupy waffles, sticky piles of sugary candy… Junk food

This sketch creates patterns ready to be produced on woven blankets.  Symmetric patterns are created algorithmically using simple geometric shapes to replicate some traditional Navajo serape designs.  The patterns are then textured and colorized using hi-res photographs of junk food.

Period. (90 & 47)
90. I research words and and play with materials exploring the representational and referential aspects of language in humorous and playful ways
47. The work is both gross and enticing

This sketch is a data visualization / reinterpretation of famous text by women authors.  The texts are taken from Project Gutenberg and then parsed to quantify statistics related to the use of the period.  The text is then reprinted and reformatted based on the data and the period-centric visual of a blood droplets on the page.

Surroundings (99 & 19)
99. painting is an act of contemplation or meditation
19. what I’m doing with these pastels is catching brief moments in time and place

This sketch is an unplanned coding session inspired by the environment and my awareness.  It is a session with a set time, length, and place with no expectations, goals, or visions.

Weathered Structures (68 & 64)
68. I find myself drawn to old, weathered structure
64. You, the audience, can see exactly what I saw

This sketch is a real-time and continuous projection of the manipulation of found images.  It follows an iterative and never-ending process.  The cycle starts with a random image being pulled from the Flickr API with the tag “weathered structure” and displayed on screen.  An algorithm then creates a rough outline of high contrast areas leaving a small amount of pixels visible.  These pixels then begin a lifespan run by a cellular automata script that transfers and adapts the colors based on a set of rules.  At the end of the lifespan, the current state of the pixels’ values is then combined with the original image to create a digitally “weathered” image.

I then created a real-time animation that explored the infinite nature of the cycles as an installation.  I used the MPE library in Processing to span an entire room of screens.  The final result was a 17 screen display with 15 different walk cycles.  Here is some fantastic cellphone video that documented it in action.

The future plan for this piece is to crowd source the walk cycles to gather a larger library of them.  I would like to have a range of artistic contributions and investigations of this topic to populate the content of this piece.

View the project here.