23.1.12

TOM DeFANTI

In 1973, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago. In the next 20 years at the University, DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of EVL hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the Star Wars movie. With Daniel J. Sandin, he founded the Circle Graphics Habitat, now known as the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). DeFanti contributed greatly to the growth of the SIGGRAPH organization and conference. He served as Chair of the group from 1981 to 1985, co-organized early film and video presentations, which became the Electronic Theatre, and in 1979 started the SIGGRAPH Video Review, a video archive of computer graphics research. http://www.calit2.net/people/staff_detail.php?id=67



Live performances, real-time instruments:
Spiral 5 PTL (Perhaps The Last) 1979

Dan Sandin, Tom DeFanti, and Mimi Shevitz
Live recording of performance before a small studio audience



Video by Tom DeFanti and Barbara Sykes

11.1.12

ART AND THE COMPUTER - MELVIN L. PRUEITT

All the following images are taken from Melvin L. Prueitt's book Art and the Computer.


The human visual system integrates line segments into subjectively perceived surfaces. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)


Richard F. Voss used fractal geometry to produce a very realistic scene. (1982 Benoit B. Mandelbrot, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center)


"Artic Twilight." Experimenting around with an erosion program. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)


"Concession to Scifi." There are number of ways to create abstract art with a computer. (1980 Darcy Gerbarg)


"Vanishing Essence." The reason that these plates are effective in producing a pleasant picture is that our visual systems are able to connect them together into unified curving surfaces. (1983 Melvin L. Prueitt)


Vibeke Sorenson's computer graphics design class in the Department of Communication Arts and Design at the Virginia Commonwealth University found that home computers could produce colorful patterns.


This was produced by James Squires as a graduate student using a Chromatics 7900 in the Fine Arts Department of UCLA.


"Rainbow Valley." The stripes in the rainbow actually consist of bent tubes. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)

4.1.12

KO NAKAJIMA

Ko Nakajima is one of the pioneer Japanese artists of video art. After beginnings in animation video, he made use of new technologies to appropriate and develop different softwares that allowed him to create veritable visual collages in movement. Each work is the expression of a unified research, progressively unveiled in the process of discovery of a life’s oeuvre.
Mount Fuji dates from the year 1984, at a time when Nakajima had already affirmed his style of manipulating images, and had established his universe distinguished by elements of nature and infused with Oriental philosophy. This tape is emblematic of the researches he conducted thanks to the invention of the aniputer, a machine which allows one to distort, superpose and embed images with ease, created in collaboration with JVC’s research department. Against the rhythm of repetitive music, different images of Mount Fuji compose geometric structures forming a Rubik’s cube’s perspectival frame, cut through by photographs which regularly come and drift away before the spectator.
Mount Fuji is a highly mystical site in Japanese culture, a religious and national symbol. It is at the heart of numerous works, placing man in relation to a mountain’s ancientness and its fundamental ambiguity – the possibility of a volcanic eruption dwells within the impression of stability and permanence. Playing with static and flat images that cut across the screen, Nakajima brings to mind the tectonic drift of plates which could at any time erase the benign image of Mount Fuji.
http://www.newmedia-arts.be/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000034495&lg=GBR

30.12.11

Activated Memory I & II

Activated Memory is a two video project based on animated photographs of different parks and buildings of Montreal. Through the use of video feedback, 3D animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of "reality" subsist. The music accompaniment is composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.




Activated Memory I is a journey through a serene landscape where the trees and fields are at once surreal and familiar.Through the use of video feedback, 3d animation and color manipulations, the pictures render a new kind of space, a virtual world where only fragments of "reality" subsist. This video was created for The Download Program of Rhizome.org. Music composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.




Activated Memory II, created for bubblebyte.org, uses buildings as the main subject of observation. As a counterpoint to parks (Activated Memory I), buildings are characterised by angular forms and opaque surfaces. Architecture is used as a point of departure to create instability. Buildings discompose their limits into the frame while the geometric original shapes and dimensions of the image loose control to create an entrance to a chaotic space where forms become liquid. Music composed by Roger Tellier-Craig.

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The videos are also part of a solo show starting today on bubblebyte.org.


27.12.11

PETER CHAMBERLAIN

Hard to find informations about Peter Chamberlain, but here is an inspiring video.

19.12.11

UNDERSTANDING COMPUTERS

I found this book for a dollar in a second hand bookstore this weekend. I was thrilled.
This volume is one of a series that examines various aspects of computer technology and the role computers play in modern life. Computer Images, Understanding Computers, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1986




Cover: Interlinked toroidal, or dougnut-like, shapes and cut-apart surface that unwraps from one toroid onto the other represent, in effect, a three dimensional space - an image virtually impossible for humans to visualize before the advent of the computer.



Artist Mark Lindquist created this portrait with a computer graphics paint system in much the same way that oils are applied to canvas. The image began as a rough, charcoal-like sketch to which the artist then added color, sparingly at first, but with increasing complexityas the work progressed. "I feel the most fluent, freest, working on the computer,"said Lindquist. "I love the idea of working with light rather than paints."



Melvin Prueitt



David Em



The main challenge presented by Rowes Wharf, a commercial building planned for the waterfront in Boston, was to design a structure that would blend esthetically with the city. Architects, thus spent much of their computer time creating models such as this one - a view of the Wharf with its surfaces filled in, integrated with a wire-fame view of the Boston skyline.



To generate this realistic rendering of the finished wharf, an artist called up a model and designated surfaces, colors, angle of light and point of view.

16.12.11

ELEANOR KENT


Landscape #2, 1986
cibachrome print from Apple lle, dimensions variable


Raspberry, 1983
cibachrome print from Apple lle, dimensions variable


New Suns, 1983
cibachrome print from Apple lle, dimensions variable


Init Hello, 1983
cibachrome print from Apple lle, dimensions variable


Seahorse, 1988
cibachrome print from Apple lle, dimensions variable

2.12.11

YOICHIRO KAWAGUCHI

Born in Tanegashima Is, Kagoshima Prefecture in 1952. Creating Computer Graphics since 1975, he is an internationally acclaimed CGI artist. He achieved a unique style using his "GROWTH Model", a model based on growth algorithm. Selforganinzing artificial life media metropolices and highly dense creations of primal wildness represent sailent characteristics of his work. http://individuals.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yoichiro/profile/profie.html








1.12.11

FICTIONS DVD

The DVDs of my video work for Le Révélateur are now officially available on Thrill Jockey!

20.11.11

EQUINOX COMPUTER GRAPHICS SPECIAL

Equinox Computer Graphics Special 1988. This is a one off Equinox computer graphics special documentary. It was first shown on UK Channel 4 back in 1988.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

10.11.11

NEWS

A lot of exciting news this month concerning my personal work. I thought I'd share! First, this week Roger Tellier-Craig AKA Le Révélateur and I had the chance to be invited to the Montreal Sessions, a radio show on CKUT, curated this month by Natasha Pickowicz. We played some music that inspired our work, and discussed about our projects among many other things. You can listen to the show here. (November 8th).

Other great news came from the San Francisco Label Root Strata.
A DVD of my work with Le Révélateur will be released on November 15th and 100 copies will be available to purchase online. Maxwell August Croy from the label did a great job designing the sleeve and the DVD cover from still images of the videos. I'll post more informations about it later.



I have also contributed to the online and printed magazine I WANT YOU, and it is out now! You can give a look here.

And finally, Le Révélateur and I will play a concert with new material at Casa Del Popolo this Saturday. The line-up is awesome (Steve Hauschildt + Driphouse + Souffle) so if you are in Montreal come check it out! The poster was made by the talented collage artist (and musician) Félix Morel.

2.11.11

DUNCAN BRINSMEAD









Siggraph Presentation




Amiga: Some of Duncan’s Original Work
video

website