#math&art

Fly ‘em High | 

Each year, I have my students build tetrahedral kites, then decorate them. I asked them to really think about what they want to put on the kites, I ask them to decorate the kites with what represent them the most, the things that “make you you”. 

Usually, it starts out with name, simply because who else but you, the one and only that no duplicate version can be made or reborn. The imagination takes them to wherever land, where I can see the pride in their face, the joy in the eyes to be praised by their peers for their good work.

I found the maths & art project hard to begin with, I was really stuck on ideas and how to let someone control something without them controlling it. With Simon and my brains working together I feel we came up with a pretty cool and abstract idea which really turned out well. Researching other generative art and systems was very useful as it is what triggered our idea to create an environment that turned peoples physical energy's into a digital art piece. The process behind making our physical pipe and sensors was a hard and long process with plenty of mistakes along the way to learn from. The digital side of our project was also hard but once it was working to a degree all we could do was improve and improve it further from then on out while learning new code and techniques at the same time. The maths behind our code is quite simple, We have LDR's that are attached to certian rules these rules use random and set values to create vine like plants to grow from the bottom of the screen upwards. Some are coloured, different sized and all grow smaller and travel at different angles depending on a probability that turns one way if 1 is picked or turns the other way if 2 or 3 is picked. There was other maths used like some trigonometry to control the angle as well. 

Over all I feel our design was pretty solid, from the look of the dirty pipe to the artwork outcome. The outcomes were quite generative as you could never draw the same thing twice based on the rules and constrains within the code. But in saying this the artist still had some control over the design by selecting which LDR is activated at which time. 

Starting out with this assignment I felt like the concept had to be really ambitious and that's when I found myself out of my depths. I had far too higher hopes for my abilities in such a short time. I would still like to implement my face installation at some point (but with a lot of help of others). The more I thought about it, and really got my own interpretation of the brief I decided to be ambitious with not the difficultly level of creation but the concept and how far away it is from the line of 'normality' of interpretation. I got creative.

Bard of Avon Yield Folio is a well suited title for my short play. It is simply produced with bits and pieces of William Shakespeare's plays. I believe I just wrote my first 'theatre of the absurd' play. Bard of Avon Yield Folio is abstract, it doesn't have a storyline and is all in all rather random. Though I do like what I have created because most people read Shakespeare's work and don't actually understand what is being said. So to over half the world's population my play will probably come across as 'just another one of Shakespeare's plays'.

I imagine that Bard of Avon Yield Folio would be the equivalent of an abstract painting. It allows the audience to see what they want to see – everyone's interpretation will be different and that is a stunning thing. It will also cause the audience to question things and be curious. I feel art is all about exploration and curiosity, and it's even better if it can make the audience to do so too.

Bard of Avon Yield Folio was completely generated using a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and a graphics calculator pseudo-random number generator with a structured system to select what line in what order.