Marcel Duchamp. Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics)

In 1920, Duchamp built Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics)  a motorized axis holds five painted glass plates, which when spun looks like a single circle.

Duchamp built this sculpture with the help of Man Ray (a popular dada and surrealist artist). The piece wasn't even considered to be art by Duchamp when they made it. The piece has an interesting story behind it:

"Man Ray set up equipment to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine on for the second time, a belt broke, and caught a piece of the glass, which after glancing off Man Ray's head, shattered into bits."

-Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp)

We spoke of Duchamp in an earlier blog post in regards to his work in dadaism and being a precursor to many Cybernetics themes like interactivity and in this case automation. These first steps that he makes are crucial breakthroughs in the history of computational art.

This piece is a good example of how motors and mechanical devices can be so easily transformed into pieces of art. I particularly like the idea of changing these devices meant for specific jobs and using them for things they were never intended for.

Harold Cohen's AARON

AARON is an artistic software program written by Harold Cohen, which creates works of art. These pieces completed both by AARON itself and AARON in collaboration with Harold Cohen, have been great in number, as they have been creating art together since 1973.

Originally designed to created abstract images in black and white using a couple basic construction tools, AARON has evolved over time and its capabilities have grown since its first version. In the 80's and 90's the art became much less abstract, creating representations of rocks, plants, and even people. All the while, working its way up to full interior scenes and colors instead of black and white. This program is reaching towards, what I believe to be a wonderful goal of, creating a program (or even artificial intelligence if you're feeling dramatic) which is capable of creating what we would call art. This goal should be one that remains in the computational art movement, but Harold Cohen feels that AARON and his goal will end with Cohen himself. While unfortunate, I would tend to agree since this project has been a 40 year endeavor by Cohen and it is unlikely anyone will step into those shoes and finish AARON. The idea behind it, though, of creating a machine capable of creating original artwork should not be something lost to the computational art movement.

AARON hopefully will become the launching point for a possibly even more creative program able to stand on par with some of the greatest artists of its time. That would truly be a wondrous thing to behold.

Video Games in General

While this blog is meant to focus on one work at a time, I will deviate from that format for this post because the focus of this one is going to be video games as works of art.

The concept of video games as art is a topic of much debate within the entertainment industry. In a very technical sense the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that they are protected creative works by the law. The issue here though is that many critics in the community refuse to recognize it as art, much the same has occurred in the past for what critics consider art. So many art forms were resisted at first, that it seems to be a right of passage for emergent art forms.The critics of video games do admit that games contain various forms of artwork, including graphic art, music, storytelling, and many others, they are resistant to calling the entire game art.

Many games, however, do incredible jobs of creating an interactive world which you can become part of through a combination of the various art forms. This creation of a story is what makes these games works of art. There are several games released in the last few years which, for the gaming community, exemplify what it means to be a truly great example of this storytelling and graphic art.

Three examples of these are actually Half-Life 2(2004), Portal(2007), and Bioshock: Infinite(2013). All of these have there own particular reasons for exemplifying what it means to be a good video game and story. The latest of them Bioshock: Infinite plays on prevalent themes from 1912 America, like racism and the deeply entrenched nationalism, creating an alternate America where these ideas are brought to extremes. This world they created allows for a very well received story that the gaming community is still raving about.

The latter two examples, both made by the Valve Corporation, are some of the strongest stories ever told through video games. These two games are almost universally accepted as shining examples of the art of video games and story telling. Half-Life in particular as a series is considered one of the most influential video games of all time.

John Conway's Game of Life

The game of life was developed by John Conway in 1970 as a response to an old computation problem put forth by John von Neumann. The game is played on an infinite two-dimensional grid of squares, each of which is either dead or alive/on or off. Every cell relies on its neighbors to determine whether or not it is alive following these rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by under-population.
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.
3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overcrowding.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

The initial pattern is what dictates how the system will evolve, each generation is created by applying the rules to the end state of the last generation, where deaths and births occur simultaneously to avoid confusion.

The game of life is a traditional example of a work which is used to describe the nature of cellular automation. Interesting aspects of these rules include stable "living" communities as well as stable groups capable of uni-directional movement and oscillating designs. The most interesting aspect of this game may be the fact that it was originally developed by Conway on a go game board. In fact the first computer program version was created by an undergraduate at Cambridge for an IBM 360. This emphasizes what I think is a very important part of Computational Art, which is that one does not require a computer to create it.

R. Mutt's Fountain - Marcel Duchamp

This urinal submitted by Marcel Duchamp is one of the most famous forms of “anti-art” or counter cultural artistic statements was "created" in 1917. This piece came up during our discussion of Dadaism in class, an early 20^th century art movement in Europe and the U.S. Marcel Duchamp is also the most famous dadaist within the United States.

Duchamp was born in 1887 in France, eventually moving to the U.S. and becoming a citizen in 1955. He gained infamy, which then grew into fame as the Avant-Garde nature of dadaism grew into popularity.

Duchamp shook the art world with this piece with this hugely art counter-culture piece, it was meant as an affront to the industry of Art Marketing. As for myself, I enjoy this piece of art because it's quite funny, and that is really all. Perhaps that was the point, to loosen the chains of decorum and politeness, and maybe just laugh at some “toilet” humor. Another point that I particularly enjoy about it is that its not just a urinal it's a brand new one straight from the store with 0 modification, well with the exception of a certain signature from R. Mutt.

This very Avant-Garde attitude served Marcel Duchamp very well, as he served as a precursor to much of the ideas behind Conceptual art and Cybernetics. Interactivity is the main aspect of Cybernetics which Marcel Duchamp pioneered it is one of the most relevant parts of Cybernetics which may not have arrived as quickly without Duchamp.

V2_lab's D-Tower

The D-Tower was up from 1998 to 2004, developed by V2_lab for the Dutch city of Doetinchem. It is a large jellyfish-like structure which changed colors based on what people felt in the city happiness, fear, love, or hate. A sort of mood ring for the population of people giving feedback to the machine. Each sensation corresponding to a specific color which lit up the tower: green = hate, red = love, blue = fear, yellow = happiness.

There were three actual parts to this installation the actual tower, a website and a questionnaire. This allowed for controlled massive connection to this device. The networking of many peoples emotions to control the color of a statue in town is definitely one of the more original ideas I have heard in some time. The concept of city wide input is interesting as well, essentially mapping out a whole city's emotions and combining them into one installation of art. It is comparable to Sol Lewitt's Copied Lines piece where each person contributes a small percentage of the overall end piece, but all collaborated to create it.

This particular installation is just one example of how far our information network has come to where we can interconnect hundreds of people all together for a mutual goal. The information super highway known as the internet has even further potential to expand what can be done with art working in union with computers.

Sol Lewitt's Wall Drawing 123: Copied Lines

Copied Lines is a significant example of algorithmic art, by drawing an initial line and copying it multiple times across an environment following a series of rules with multiple people. "Copied Lines" was created in 1972, and a copy of the work is now in the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover Massachusetts. The exact instruction set for which is:

"The first draftsman draws a not straight vertical line as long as possible. The second draftsman draws a line next to the first one, trying to copy it. The third draftsman does the same, as do as many draftsmen as possible. Then the first draftsman, followed by the others, copies the last line drawn until both ends of the wall are reached."

The artist meant this piece as a conceptual form of art which turns the work into more of a machine to create art rather than a single piece. It is particularly interesting as it is never the same design twice as the initial line is always different, not only that though because the rules say nothing about distance between copies. It is an Algorithmic, Interactive, and Generative piece of art, which serves as a wonderfully simple and elegant example of all three. It is particularly interesting to me as a piece because it shows how these technical forms of art transcend computers, but can also apply to pieces of a much larger scope. Beyond that the fact that it is a group activity, each individual providing one of the lines, makes for an interesting effect.