software

Instantiations #4 & #5 (The Tweens)

Because these curves have a kind of double ontology–they exist as figures, i.e. lines with a certain shape that can be drawn on screen or printed out on paper, and as a set of parameters within a complex parametric equation, i.e. a set of constitutive numbers, not unlike genetic material, from which they can be generated–they have specific manipulable properties. One of these is the ability to measure and interpolate the distance between any pair or set of figures.

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Instantiations #3 (The Subjective)

Instantiations 3 2003.0129.1923 b (detail)

Each of these panels contains a set of 4 images selected from a superset of 1000 randomly generated curves. This piece focuses on the interface between the machinic process of generation and the subjective process of selection. The grouplings formed on the basis of percieved similarity have little relation to the actual parameters which produce the work. The projective tendencies of the mind attribute characteristics like curliness, roundness, or even femininity, energy or wierdness to what are merely inert lines.

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Instantiations #2 (The Multitude)

These pieces show the range of variation that is possible within this simple system. Each panel contains a set of 24 randomly generated curves. Titles are the dates and times of generation.

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After Metronomic Irregularity

These works start from the example of Hesse's Metronomic Irregularity, translating the system first into language as a description of its system, and then into the performative language of software. The variability of paths between the regular spacing of the grid suggests a profusion of variation - the grid is exploded and parameterized relativized as a structuring mechanism. The possibilities for alternative organizing principles extends serially, pointing towards the infinite:

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Bezier

The project Bezier consists of experiments exploring the properties of the Bezier Curve – a workhorse of computer graphics. These elegant lines are the constituent elements of vector-based drawing and their mathematical basis finds its way into other aspects of visual display as well. For example, in motion graphics, the "ease-in" and "ease-out" functions used to create naturalistic movement can make use of bezier curves.

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Bezier Objects (animations)

The animations came after an extended exploration of the Bezier curves (as described in the main project's documentation).

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10 concepts of computation (arranged in order of increasing outrageousness)

The ideational threads that weave their way through this list summarize the obsessions that motivated my work during the five previous years. There is a trajectory here: from a concern for the abstract, theoretical underpinnings of computer technology, to the intertwining of technical and cultural logics in the lives and politics of the people who create and use computers.

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V. The Front and the Back

The front-end/back-end model taken as paradigmatic of digital art by CODEDOC is what is supposed to make the show’s reversal, its focus on the code, make sense. But CODEDOC’s presumptions are several: that digital art is visual; that digital art involves code; and, that its split is binary between a front and a back end.

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VI. Yet Another Science

For computer science, the meaning of the word abstract is tied most often to the third sense of the term, as outlined above, generality. As with art, there seems to be some slippage, and particularly in theoretical deployments, the term can denote the conceptual.

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III. The Abstract

The word abstract has several senses: (1) it denotes, most literally, separateness, a meaning directly correlative to its Latin root abstractus, “to draw from, separate;” (2) it means something considered apart from a particular application or real world existence, i.e.

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