Inside the computer there’s a digital hand. The hand selects a metal implement, cuts off a slab of clay, and carves into its surface. It wanders like your hand wanders; it carves imaginary contours, sinuous and exploratory. It doesn’t know the end result so it carves lines until it feels content, and then it numbers the piece and stamps its maker’s mark. It fires the slab in a digital kiln (it calls this “minting”) and through this act its art is preserved for millennia. The hand runs its fingers over the textured surface, feeling satisfaction at having spontaneously produced a piece of art so beautiful, expressive, and unique.

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Ceramics is a generative sculpture that mimics the physical expression of carving into clay. Through uncanny naturalistic rendering it challenges our notion of “handmade”. It asserts that the value of handmade isn’t the time it takes to make the work nor the physical materials consumed, but the endless small decisions and serendipitous details that appear along the way, as can be felt in each Ceramics mint.

Despite the handmade nature of Ceramics the outputs cannot be touched. Highly tactile images enchant the viewer to imagine their tangible representations, and leave them to dwell on their perception of materiality — both in the experiential physical world and conceptually-infinite digital space.

Ceramics

Solar Transits is a procedural exploration of the origins of astrophotography. Each image in this series depicts a randomly generated astronomical event but viewed through the lens of mid-to-late 19th century image capture techniques. The collection features a variety of rare alignments of stars, planets and moons, and are rendered in the spirit of the daguerreotype.

In June of 2012, I took a trip to Minneapolis to speak at the Eyeo Festival. Venus was going to transit while I was there. I was curious. I had not seen a transit before. At 5:09 pm on June 5th, a nearly imperceptible black circle began its march across the sun. Were it not a predicted mathematical certainty, it is doubtful anyone would have noticed. For six minutes, the light from the sun was 0.087% dimmer.

It is a significant thing to see an object silhouetted against the sun. We are so accustom to seeing our perfect circle of pure light that we can't help but to celebrate the occasions where something blocks the view. I still feel a little more excitement when a slight shadow shoots across the landscape on a cloudless day, the source being an extremely rare transit of a commercial jet liner.

Exponentially more rare is the planetary transit. When Venus hangs on the horizon, glowing against the night sky, it is all too easy to think it another star. Only when it is viewed in silhouette can its position in our universe be fully appreciated: orbitally locked like us, and forever drawing it's path around the sun. That tiny black circle effected me in a big way. The scale of the cosmos shifted into perspective. That doesn’t happen often. I was incredibly moved. It was an experience I will never forget. This project is an homage to that strange once-in-a-lifetime event.

As it turns out, I was very lucky to have seen it at all. In the time since my birth in 1972, a Venus transit has only happened twice. The 1st time was in 2004 but I lived in a part of the world where it was not visible. The 2nd time was in 2012. Unless I live to be 145 years old, there won’t be a 3rd time. There are a couple silver linings: the Great American solar eclipse is on April 8 2024, and Mercury will transit in 2032.

The first 10 sales will have the option to purchase their output in the form of a framed daguerreotype.

Solar Transits

Fidenza is by far my most versatile algorithm to date. Although the program stays focused on structured curves and blocks, the varieties of scale, organization, texture, and color usage it can employ create a wide array of generative possibilities.

Fidenza

Archetype explores the use of repetition as a counterweight to unruly, random structures. As each single component look chaotic alone, the repetition brings along a sense of intentionality, ultimately resulting in a complex, yet satisfying expression.

Archetype

Screens have been at the heart of art mass production and mass consumption for ages. From screen printing techniques, first developed in China around 1000AD and later popularized in western art culture by e.g. Andy Warhol, to the screens on our devices used to consume both digital art as well as most traditional art we experience in our life.

The "Screens" series is a celebration of modern art. It is inspired by the aesthetics inherent in screen printing along with the compositions and colors of both Bauhaus, Constructivism, and pulp fiction sci-fi covers.

The compositions in "Screens" is based purely on strict geometries and plays with the tension, and symphonies that can be created from combining simple rules. The end result can range from chaotic non-figurative to strongly ordered isometric scenes.

The generative system underlying the rendering mimics the screen printing process by rendering and applying a single color at a time to a master image. Each virtual screen may be more or less aligned with the master, creating a lovely flawed balance to the precision of the rendered geometry.

25% of the proceeds from this project will be donated to Den Blå Planet, The Danish National Aquarium, in support of their work on preserving and restoring marine life and ecology.

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #166

Charlotte Dann

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