Generative paintings made with computer code. The artworks develop the languages and forms of modern abstraction though new digital technologies. (You will need the shockwave plug-in to experience this work online). This work is formally different from my main artwork in that that my objective has always been to extend the notion of what painting is. Using computer code various paradigms emerge that allows me to shape and construct the visual aesthetic. I am not so much interested in the code as the manipulation of form.

Click here to see a dedicated video channel of these works instead.

Click here to read paper published on Amorphoscapes circa. 2001

About Amorphoscapes.

Audio visual relationships between art and science....maybe. Paper First published at COSIGN-2002, 02 – 04 September 2002, University of Augsburg, Lehrstuhl f ü r Multimedia-Konzepte und Anwendungen, Germany ...[download information sheet... pdf info]

Amorphoscapes by Stanza are interactive, generative, audio visual, digital paintings and drawings created specifically for the internet. This is interactive art on the internet, incorporating generative sounds and 3D imaging. Amorphoscapes, provide a seductive, multi-sensory non-linear and interactive experience for the audience to immerse into. Cellular forms replicate, intricate webs evolve, moods and colours change and fuse, sounds and rhythms pulse and change. Amorphoscapes allow the "user" to experience each artwork differently, depending on how they choose to navigate. As well as providing this non-linearity, some of the pieces change over time, ie they generate. The "user" controls these evolving pieces through movement. The character of the resulting piece is unique to the user. This change in the relationship between the 'user' and the artist changes the perception of the artwork. The user can choose what they experience. At any time the user can make subtle or total change to their Amorphoscape whenever they want to explore further. Or simply watch the piece change itself, in a generative way. Amorphoscapes are audio visual paintings, and can be installed into 'real' environments, where the movement of people in the room or gallery triggers the interactivity within the work. They could be thought of as drawing and paintings machines, in the future to be projected, onto buildings, on clothes and on cars, and on large plasma screens in your living room.

AMORPHOSCAPES: AUDIOVISUAL SYNTHESIS, A NEW KIND OF PAINTING

Amorphoscapes are a new type of image and a new type of painting. A definition could be; "a self contained online image experience". They react to users and are in turn influenced by the users movement. These paintings are generated, they use programming languages, and incorporate manipulated images using software to create them. These works are an audio-visual synthesis. Its not about sound at the expense of the visual element. My work is about the marriage and synthesis of the audio visual potential exploring the internet as a medium in its own right.

To engage with my online work the user must participate in a number of ways, not only as a passive observer but also as an active 'user'. The user is directly related to the shifting audio visual language that moves only when the user moves and shifts with the works. The choices are made by the user, but clearly the aesthetics are defined by me, the artist. The use of specific types of sounds, colours, patterns and lines are all defined parameters within each work. But in the new online works in my 'Amorphoscapes' series, the user can move these lines and colours in a constantly shifting changing audio visual experience. So now, where once the viewpoint was fixed and static, the parameters are allowed to be changed, These artworks have become mostly non-linear and multi- layered. The visitor to such an experience is paramount to the understanding and meaning of the artwork. Only by engaging with the work will he understand that he himself essentially determines what he will see. This it could be said has become true of all artwork, but within the interactive works, each user thus creates their own artwork, and more importantly the artwork becomes increasingly co-dependent on the user and their input or interaction. Amorphoscapes as digital paintings inhabit the worlds of art, music and design. As artworks, they are an extension to the modernist grid; except now the grid is multiplying and shifting. Moving into another dimension of multi user input both from the audio and the visual. I like the idea that these works embrace the art of drawing and painting; in fact they act as autonomous drawing and painting machines.

Each online installation is an experimental attempt to make an interface which is interesting to look at and expressive booth audibly and visually. So the new interactive works are variable, and with my "Amorphoscapes" series, they also allow you to do it online, globally, in real time as internet specific artworks. i.e. this is net art. It is interesting to set up some limitations for the internet; it helps understand where the net and net art is at the moment. The amorphoscapes are quite small in file size, usually up to 100k sometimes 200k if there are lots of sounds. Its means the user can actively engage with the work, quickly and in real time. Because of this, design plays an important part in the overall aesthetic. Big graphics and large sounds files are avoided, to aid consumption via download, because of bandwidth. The entrance to the gallery is a 56 k modems, so I respect the audience by not putting up large downloads. So the cube is the gallery, but the internet can also be extended outside the cube into the real space. I recently set up a series of satellite links from my websites, the central city, and some of the Amorphoscapes series. I took my laptop into strange spaces to move the internet into the real world. Certain works were then changing over the net, and inside the corridors of a hotel a huge projected Amorphoscape was being shown. I also used a very small projector and display, and set up small six-inch web artworks in the park and in the street.

These new interactive works can be taken off the box and displayed as interactive installations triggered by the movement of people in front of the work. Using the sound based extra, as people approach the work starts making new objects, and cells started replicating. And as they move away the piece stops. I have also been asked to present these works at galleries. I am developing touch sensitive screens versions of the Amorphoscapes series. Very large plasma screens can engage the user and allow the Amorphoscapes a more subtle engagement that becomes more like an integrated and playful audio visual experience. They can also allow multi user experiences in sound, and visual connectivity. The digital artworks will download to phones, TV and advertising billboards. The new digital art will be embraced both as a background ambience and a way to stimulate the everyday mundane. They can be changed for daily enjoyment and pleasure as well as to help enhance the environment. In your living room, or business environment, when you walk past them they will move. They can be made to generate and replicate all day. Also when loud people are talking they can be set up to move and evolve and when people sit quietly they could be set up to slow down and stop. The digital paintings amorphoscapes, could be called "visually dynamic systems", I think someone has mentioned that before. These works are aligned as a contribution to re -new the aesthetic of the painterly process. My interactive paintings are similar to real paintings in that they involve space, colours, texture, and light (although in a different way from the physicality of the painting as an art object.). But none the less similar formal valuations can be seen in this work as can be seen in certain colour field painting of the late sixties for example

CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS

So what's next? 3D multi user environments with generative evolving sounds, the creation of "beautiful paintings on the net", moving in three d, user controlled, fully immersive experiences. These works will be sold in kits from websites, and viewed on large plasma screens inside domestic areas, screens that constantly change. The complications of creating sounds online within small file size packets have also led me to try creating generative sounds. First via lingo within shockwave, and now within super collider, the audio synthesis software. Small files based in sample banks can be called and played in all manner of random and strange ways. My interest here is to use this online via shockwave so I have been trying to get an extra written that will allow generative sounds to be controllable via shockwave. This will allow very small sounds files to be incorporated into the works, l leading to sound- based works where users can change the parameters of the file, and the sound file will keep changing and generating in new and interesting ways. The extension of the music can also be expand to allow the global multi user experience where the composition is an evolving structure that has nodes that can be altered by many people all in real time. New works are continually added to the series. Over time I plan to edit and rework various areas in the site to reflect the evolving nature of the internet. The beauty of the internet is that nothing is finite here; everything can be changed and re- evaluated. The constant scratching of the surface allowed by increased bandwidth will allow larger use of graphic and larger sounds files and constant reworking of other media but this particular reworking of surface is most relevant to the interactive works where ideas, codes, and whole sites can evolve.

In the future I envisage this work will be used as addition to the advertising and corporate environment, to compliment urban spaces, and for internet locations in urban locations, as interventions; i.e. as satellite projected space to refocus the energies and ideas that situations contain. Developing on from this we might present ideas via a live website in the real world, or in a corridor in a hospital or even as a micro site ( by this I mean website on cells that are so small they are unperceivable); websites on our shirts and websites on the bus......or rather digital artworks evolving and spreading upwards outwards and into our lives. Next we will have multiple users controlling multiple artworks via online networks using wireless technologies.

Stanza 2002

 

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