computer art

Lecture : A Machine that Makes Art @ Richmond Art Society

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On Wednesday 20th November, I’m giving a lecture at the Richmond Art Society:

(Guests are welcome, please see the website)

8pm @ Richmond The American International University in London
Queen’s Road, Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey, TW10 6JP

The inspiration for this talk comes from the great conceptual artist Sol LeWitt’s statement, The idea becomes a machine that makes the art (1967). Although LeWitt’s ‘machine’ was metaphorical rather than literal, nevertheless this radical concept raised questions about the notion of art process and creative behavior and challenged the notion of what art was or could be.  To what extent does the hand of the artist need to be involved in the art-making? Artists such as David Hockney (on the iPad), Julian Opie, Jessica Steinkamp and others use computer code of simple instructions to generate complex and visually arresting art works.  So why, more than 40 years after Le Witt’s comment, is it still such a leap of faith for some in the mainstream art world to conceive of the involvement of a machine like a computer?  We will explore the use of computing and digital systems in art today.

Expanded Evolution

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William Latham, Mutator 2 Evolving Form, 2013. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.
William Latham, Mutator 2 Evolving Form, 2013. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

Bizarre, strange mutated forms looming out of computer space; William Latham is a gardener steering and evolving forms within a kind of virtual evolution.  These images lead
us to imagine we are being allowed in on the secrets of the universe.  Following on from his exhibition in Brighton, William is my BCS featured artist for the month of November: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51594

Grayson Perry: “Michelangelo would be making CGI movies & 3D printing”

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Grayson Perry said in his Reith Lecture this morning that if Michelangelo were alive today he wouldn’t be painting ceilings he’d be making CGI movies and 3D printing.  He pointed out that artists have always been early adopters of new technology; it was an acknowledgement that perhaps the real innovation in art today is happening away from the traditional art world coterie of dealers/ galleries/auction houses and is engaging with technology or even taking place in cyberspace.

Image from BBC Radio 4
Grayson Perry (image from BBC Radio 4)

The 3 lectures so far have made for wonderful listening – I especially enjoyed hearing him take a strip off international art English (in first lecture) which is rife in the art world, spreading since the 1970s via the art press.  Quoting artists Rule & Levine and their e-flux website language analyser – this type of art bollocks (sorry semantics) rebukes ordinary English for it’s lack of nouns. Perry said he gets metaphysical sea-sickness from reading this sort of text.  There was a hilarious piece – an A to Z guide to fluent Artspeak, by Philip Hook, (whose new book about the art world is out this week), printed in this week’s Sunday Times Culture.  My favourite Viewing Experience, Hook says is a nauseating term to denote looking at a picture in that it offers a highly engrossing viewing experience.

After today’s standing ovation at the lecture, I’d say Perry is seriously in danger of becoming one of Britain’s Greatest Living National Treasures.

Digital Vanitas

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Rob and Nick Carter’s art is a memento mori with a twist, because what appears initially as a painted panel in a wooden frame (of the kind favoured by Dutch 17th-C
masters), upon sustained looking reveals a screen playing a looped animated image of a painted frog breathing its last and slowly decomposing before our eyes.  An updated symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death for our digital age.  Read more about  Transforming Vanitas Painting, in my BCS article this month.

Rob and Nick Carter, Transforming Vanitas Painting, 2013 after Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, Dead Frog with Flies, c.1630, In collaboration with MPC. 3 hour looped film, frame & 21.5in Apple iMac, edition of 12 + 5 artists� proofs. � Rob and Nick Carter, Courtesy of The Fine Art Society and MPC
Rob and Nick Carter, Transforming Vanitas Painting, 2013 after Ambrosius Bosschaert the Younger, Dead Frog with Flies, c.1630, In collaboration with MPC. 3 hour looped film, frame & 21.5in Apple iMac, edition of 12 + 5 artists  proofs.   Rob and Nick Carter, Courtesy of The Fine Art Society and MPC

Role-play at the Biennale

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Nicola Costantino, Rapsodia inconclusa [Unfinished Rhapsody]: Eva el espejo [Eva the Mirror], detail of installation Argentina Pavilion: Eva - Argentina, 55th Venice Biennale 2013. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.
Nicola Costantino, Rapsodia inconclusa [Unfinished Rhapsody]: Eva el espejo [Eva the Mirror], detail of installation Argentina Pavilion: Eva – Argentina, 55th Venice Biennale 2013. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission

Nicola Costantino’s, Rapsodia inconclusa [Unfinished Rhapsody], is an installation currently showing at the Argentina Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, which uses digital video to speak of the nation’s continuing attempts to make sense of a turbulent 20th-C political history. At the heart of this work is the controversial and emotionally-charged character of Eva Peron, the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. Read about Nicola Costantino’s work in my article this month for the BCS:http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51225

Re-Visiting the Grand Tour

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Emily Allchurch, Grand Tour: In Search of Soane (after Gandy), Transparency on LED lightbox, 106.6x182.4 cm, 2012. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission
Emily Allchurch, Grand Tour: In Search of Soane (after Gandy), Transparency on LED lightbox, 106.6×182.4 cm, 2012. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission

The UK artist and Royal College of Art graduate Emily Allchurch creates complex photographic images which draw on art history to make contemporary re-creations of iconic works. My image for the BCS this month is Grand Tour: In Search of Soane, an amazingly detailed and finely-crafted work currently on view at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition  (to 18 August). Read it here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/51058

A Glitch in the Matrix

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Have you ever heard of Glitch Art? Neither had I until Glitch Moment/ums the current exhibition at Furtherfield, which introduces this fascinating and varied aesthetic inspired by faults and malfunctions – the frustrating by-product of technology gone
awry.

Benjamin Gaulon KindleGlitched, 2012. From a series of glitched Kindles donated, found or bought on eBay and signed by the artist. The generated visuals are unique and permanent. Glitch art subverts the way in which we are supposed to relate to technology, causing playful, imaginative disruptions. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission
Benjamin Gaulon KindleGlitched, 2012. From a series of glitched Kindles donated, found or bought on eBay and signed by the artist. The generated visuals are unique and permanent. Glitch art subverts the way in which we are supposed to relate to technology, causing playful, imaginative disruptions. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission

Benjamin Gaulon, our featured BCS artist this month, has a unique way of considering current information and communication technologies and teasing art from it. Learn more about Glitch Art and this artist here.

A Layered Practice

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Paul Coldwell, Still Life with Keys, Inkjet + laser cut relief, 2012. Image size 47 x 64cms, paper size 59 x 84cms copyright the artist, reproduced with permission
Paul Coldwell, Still Life with Keys, Inkjet + laser cut relief, 2012. Image size 47 x 64cms, paper size 59 x 84cms. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission

This month’s BCS column looks at the work of printmaker Paul Coldwell, who integrates digital techniques into his traditional practice to great effect. Read it here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50703Paul Coldwell, Greenwich Show

Paul’s exhibition is at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London until 11th July. Click on the image on the right to see details.

Additionally, Paul has an exhibition at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge until 20th July.

Chinese Challenges

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Wang Bo / Hutoon Studio, poster for Miss Puff, 2011
Wang Bo / Hutoon Studio, poster for Miss Puff, 2011

With an estimated 500 million Internet users, the Web has been called the most creative space for self-expression in China. In particular social networking and blogging on the Internet is hugely prominent. In this article I look at the challenges facing two Chinese artists – Wang Bo and Ai Weiwei, who use this technology within the free market/communist state contradiction that is China today. Read it here:http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50489

Fake Nature

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Jennifer Steinkamp, Judy Crook 1, 2012, video installation, 13 x 10 feet (installed Greengrassi Gallery 2013). Photo by Marcus Leith, copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.
Jennifer Steinkamp, Judy Crook 1, 2012, video installation, 13 x 10 feet (installed Greengrassi Gallery 2013). Photo by Marcus Leith, copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

Jennifer Steinkamp’s beautiful tree moves as though blowing in the wind and transforms over time as the seasons change. This Los Angeles based artist explores ideas about architectural space, motion and perception using computer animation to engage viewers through use of transient elements in the natural world. Read more about Steinkamp and her work in this month’s BCS column here:http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50226