“A particular order can be found in deepest space, in our oceans and forests, and in all living things, including ourselves – a unified code producing endless variation.  Gravity and cosmic winds shape star-forming nebulas into coral-like forms.  Flowers self-organize in radial symmetry with signals hidden from the human eye.  Stars are birthed, explode, collapse, and are reborn.  Invertebrates move on the tides of oceans, signaling with ever-changing bioluminescence.  Light bends time as events unfold in our own lives.” 

Cosmic Reef reflects on the ordered randomness in nature, capable of producing beauty and symmetry.  The individual works begin with a simple geometry that becomes more complex through composed dynamic layers, each born of a combination of human control and computational chance.  

Leo Villareal creates intricate sculptures that speak to the underlying rules and structures of systems for both gallery and public settings.  He is interested in exploring ways to express this through base units such as pixels and binary code.  Villareal is most known for two monumental public artworks: The Bay Lights, a site-specific light sculpture that occupies the entire western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and Illuminated River, a series of generative light sculptures installed on nine bridges over the River Thames in London.

CONTROLS:

“Z”: Journey along the Z-axis   

Cosmic Reef is graphics intensive & requires a WebGL2-enabled browser.


Cosmic Reef

“Fragments of an infinite field” is a compositional system in which an idealized plant species is generated and arranged in a potentially infinite field of foliage. The main environmental parameter of the composition is the determination of a season of the year. The season determines the landscape’s colors and defines specific phenomena for each of them, such as rain in summer, snow in winter, petals falling in autumn, and pollen in spring. The flower has several possible variables, which can be macro aspects, affecting the entire population of the species, or micro, affecting each individual of the species differently. For example, the number of petals can be equal in all individuals or not. The number of filaments and other structures of the flower can undergo minor deviations, generating small mutations. The confusion between the figure (plant) and the background (earth, sky, other natural elements) is fascinating from a compositional point of view. The background colors are, most of the time, colors present in the figures, often breaking the boundary between them and, therefore, generating chromatic masses. In this project I also intend to research the following question: How to create parameters that resemble a living organism's growth? In this sense, the project approaches digital morphogenesis and the development of procedural organisms.

Fragments of an Infinite Field

_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

An on-chain experiment with interactive abstract art.

Dynamic Slices

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.

Art Blocks Curated

Skulptuur #993

Piter Pasma

About Skulptuur #993

Piter Pasma

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Cosmic Reef

Leo Villareal

Fragments of an Infinite Field

Monica Rizzolli

Act of Emotion

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Dynamic Slices

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