_Act of Emotion_ investigates digitally-facilitated abstract expressionism: the act of painting itself as a means of expression, extended into mechanical reach.
A reflection upon the future of automation, machine consciousness, creativity, and humankind’s inevitable consequences. As we await the next leap, we cling desperately to our belief that emotive art is an exclusively human experience. 
Inspired by those that came before—pioneering expressionists and contemporaries alike—the system engages in new methods of painting, free from traditionally accepted physical boundaries and artistic expectations. Action painting for the Connected Age; the system is in perpetual concert, recited in real-time and on-demand. 

Questioned by Colin McCahon, and recontextualised here through a generative lens: 
_How to make a painting beat like, and with, a human heart._
The machine’s movements are precise by default, grounded in mathematics. Organic expression must be introduced by twisting and destabilising; a process of broadening bounds that probes the subconscious of both artist and audience. 

Confrontingly minimal abstract compositions highlight the tension between rigid mechanical precision and fluid human intuition. Striping and stippling, swooping and darting; noisy automatism contrasted with coded instinct. 
Gestural abstraction applied with simulation of brush and emulation of media. Presence discovered through colour, texture, light and space; the works emerge as physically-manifested in digital form. 

Are these painted works analogous to physical counterparts? 
Can a machine successfully emotionally connect through this practice?
Let us consider both the intent and the act that realise a painted artwork.

_“Painting is a state of being. Painting is self-discovery.”_ — Jackson Pollock

# Controls:
- **[spacebar]** Pause/resume exhibit
- **[escape]** Reset exhibit
- **[S]** Export a still image at the current render size
- **_Double Click/Tap_** to provide a human touch

# Automatic:
- Render resolution upscales with viewport dimensions. Future exhibits will enhance alongside hardware advance. 
- Playback cadence is hardware-dependent and downscales when limited by hardware. 
- "**Perpetual**" tokens continue their performance indefinitely

# Printing:

Generatively signed giclée print renditions available up to 36x48" / A0.

Act of Emotion

"Edifice" is a series of 976 massive, deteriorating structures built on strange terrain. It is an exploration of buildings being conceptualized, constructed, and eroded away under a wide variety of conditions. Edifice's outputs run the gamut between minimal and maximal, with some showing few large, static blocks of color, and others many small, highly textured and warped shapes. Each image is progressively constructed in front of the viewer's eyes. It is a system full of surprises that I'm excited to share with the world.

Edifice

Anticyclones are a weather phenomena.
They pierce through darkness to instill peace and calm. Their planetary scale reminds us of how little we are and how powerful they can be.

High pressure, rotation, air flow… The "Anticyclone" series is an artistic exploration and interpretation of those concepts.

The rendering borrows its aesthetics from traditional and organic media like paper and crayons, to lend an analog/archival look.

"Can a computer draw like a human?"
The question is asked and challenged once more through "Anticyclone".

[Press the left/right keys to explore the different steps building the final image. Bottom/top for the first/last step. Can be intense for your machine]

Anticyclone

Our studio, Aranda\Lasch, was formed in the early 2000s to explore algorithmic systems and generative processes as a means to understand the world around us and make things within it. Whether encapsulated in physical or computational techniques, these processes act with their own degree of autonomy from our own biases and as a result, open up new ideas and sensibilities while dismantling traditional notions of authorship. They allow one to code the possibility of discovery and surprise into the creative process in a manner that can be widely shared and because of this transmissibility, algorithms frustrate the idea of a single author, inviting speculation on the shared nature of creativity. For this reason we have always understood our work to be a collaboration between each other, those who share with us and those who inspire us. 

Over the years, the studio has indulged in a number of obsessions. One is the conviction that history is a generative source with which to constantly entangle. Whether it is through stories, characters, techniques, or events, history acts as a medium active with properties that constantly reshape and transform our concept of the present. We look back to move forward, like hitching a ride. It is here that we encounter Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and his masterpiece Melancholia I (1514) to inspire a deep dive into the process of engraving as a representational technique reinterpreted through the contemporary medium of code. By scratching metal away from a plate, an inversion of conventional drawing, engraving allowed a work of art to be reproduced and disseminated widely. In addition to the piece’s masterful delineation, its allegory resonates with us as well. In Dürer’s time melancholy was associated with insanity but also with creativity. In the engraving, the winged personification of melancholy -- the work is widely regarded to be a self-portrait of the artist -- is surrounded by the tools and elements of geometry. For Dürer, as for a handful of others who came before and after, who test the porous borders between art, science and religion, geometry is a vehicle for imagination, a shadow of the divine and a portal to the infinite. 

This work Primitives is a kindred meditation on infinity through an exploration of a novel geometric structure using algorithm and code, the tools of today's geometers and mystics, made visible through the anachronism of the engravers trade translated into pure 1’s and 0’s. Primitives grows through a single shape that can repeat and scale in specific ways that are never random, but rather tightly governed by geometric logics. It is about drawing infinity through a radical modularity; ordered but aperiodic. Unlike a regular crystal, whose molecular pattern is periodic (or repetitive in all directions), the distinctive quality of this quasicrystal is that its structural pattern never repeats the same way twice. Endless and uneven in aggregate, Primitive clusters can be described by the precise arrangement of a single modular part. As these small units aggregate together they form larger figures that themselves combine into ever larger movements, always a little bit different from any other. In this sense, quasicrystalline patterns have an infinite capacity to create and carry information. 

We are here because this is a medium for sharing in perpetuity. In the last couple of years, on the cusp of our third decade of practice, we have watched with awe and delight a renaissance in generative work as it's adopted by an entirely new generation around blockchain technologies. This inspired us to enter this new space with our own enduring questions of form and geometry, modularity and variability, historical continuity, and the thirst for endlessness. Primitives is what we selected as our primer into generative art on-chain because both the work and the medium grapple with these questions. 

Some Notes:
On the screen, Primitives is represented as a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional figure. Each invocation comes with a sequence of projections, or rotations, around this object. As Primitives spins, there are moments when its blocks snap into alignment with other blocks  revealing its underlying lattice and crystalline nature. Each projection can be saved as a high resolution image for printing. Primitives can also be saved in three dimensions as an .obj file for a variety of uses including the creation of a physical object through 3-d printing or fabrication. Below is a list of interface instructions:

'left' + 'right' arrow keys to rotate 
'up' + 'down' arrow keys to zoom in 
'g' regrows geometry 
'i' saves image 
'o' saves .obj

Thank you,
Aranda\Lasch
2022

Primitives

An exploration in generating forms in 3-dimensional space. This exclusive set of sculptures has been carved from a sea of infinite possibilities, much like a sculptor creates a singular reality from the potential in a block of stone. The shapes are illuminated by a variety of complex virtual lighting environments and yet the piece retains algorithmic minimalism with the code reduced to its pure essence -- 6370 bytes. Skulptuurs render in real time. In live view, the image keeps improving in quality. Keys 0-7 change speed: 0=Stop, 5=Default, 7=Fastest. Careful, requires a powerful machine. Requires a WebGL2-enabled browser.

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Skulptuur #990

Piter Pasma

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Piter Pasma

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