Augury is a festive collection ranging from vast sorbet-colored landscapes to dense pattern iterations.
 
Augury remixes frames from LoVid’s red, green, and blue (RGB) luminous moving image work. For over two decades, LoVid has been making audiovisual works using custom-built handmade analog video (and audio) synthesizers. In addition to moving-image media, LoVid’s outputs capture stills (frames) from generative video and incorporate these into digital collages, textile designs, wearable works, prints, and more. An essential part of LoVid’s process involves translating signals and experiences from one medium into another. This conversion/interoperability appears critical for living in an interdisciplinary, intermedia, intersectional mixed-reality world.

With Augury, LoVid continues exploring on-chain processes that are inspired by the mechanism and aesthetic of analog synthesis.This collection builds upon LoVid’s first analog video synthesizer-inspired collection: Tide Predictor. Each output in Augury grabs frames from the Tide Predictor algorithm (using a unique new hash) and arranges them on the screen based on a set of instructions, possibilities, and limitations.  The generative compositions in Augury are therefore both procedurally related to and visually reminiscent of quilting, tapestry pattern designs, and tactile weaving. They use visual elements that LoVid often employs in static works: mirroring and repetitive looping, abrupt changes in intensity and detail, overlapping recycled patterns, and a colliding playful mix of lines and signals buzzing in different directions. 

The rules applied in Augury are primarily set around placing variable levels of density on the borders, the edges of the work, creating a sense of dynamic movement and discovery. Focusing the viewer’s gaze outside the center encourages shifts in perspectives, literally and symbolically. Augury is inspired both by the ideas and aesthetics in the Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement and Glitch art. 

P&D emerged in the 1970s as a response and challenge to a predominantly white male aesthetic that dominated the artworld and historically marginalized art forms and practices of women and people of color. P&D took a feminist approach by shifting the conversation around crafts and decorative arts, placing them on an equal canonic level with western-style paintings. Augury expands this conversation to generative art and challenges hierarchies and relationships to status, economy, and desire. 

Glitch art refers to artifacts that were created by machine error, intentionally or by chance. Glitch as an art form originally emerged as a response to and celebration of loss in signals “fleeting artifacts that momentarily offer a glimpse into the inner workings and complexities of storage, display, and communication technology” (Iman Moradi, 2009). In Augury, LoVid incorporates a color palette, textures, and shapes inspired by both digital glitches and inherently unstable analog outputs. Aesthetically and viscerally, Augury finds beauty in discarded marginal dysfunctionality. 

This collection’s title, Augury, refers to the practice of interpreting omens/predicting the future based on the behavior of birds. Complex systems and environmental signals inspire and require attention. LoVid’s Augury harnesses and embraces this chaos, the turbulent flow of data, to bring you a sweet and colorful feast for the eyes, food for thought and beyond!

Augury

**SCRIBBLINES** are a tribute to countless drawings that are being created every day during monotonous meetings and are forever lost in trash.

Almost everybody has experienced doodling (or scribbling) at some point in our lives to keep our brains active. The mental state of doodling is between awareness and daydreaming and is known to often inspire creative ideas. Studies have shown that this idle scribbling actually plays a significant part in helping a person concentrate and focus. 

There are many types of idle scribbles - *real world objects (e.g. houses, hearts), people, faces, squiggles, boxes and cubes, ladders and stairs, spider webs, triangles, swirls*, among others. "Scribblines" has always been my favorite idle drawing.  At the core of each piece is a pivot line, created by a random algorithm. This pivot line defines the shape of the entire art piece. Every additional line traces around the pivot line. Computer generated lines allow for perfecting what is never possible in the “pen and paper world” and thus make this, somewhat obsessive, exercise compelling to the perfectionist’s eye. All these become the basics for the Scribblines features.

**Precision**. Even with great effort it is hard to follow the outlines precisely. In scribblines, the lines precision varies from inaccurate (to simulate hand shaking micro movements) to robotically perfect precision.
**Determination**. In a real world environment it is unlikely to find enough time or perseverance to fill in the whole paper surface and finish these drawings. Due to this I chose most of the generated Scribblines to fill the whole screen. However some pieces are set to be finished as a 'bulk' shapes and not fill in the whole piece.
**Paper**. The backgrounds imitate typical types of paper in lighter or darker colour. There are few special 'sticky note' papers in the algorithm as well.
**Pen**. The most variability is produced by opening all possible pen options. Pen thickness can vary from "Rollerball - Ultra Fine" to "Marker - Extra Bold". The most variability is provided by variable line widths in one piece. Random line feature chooses from several line width possibilities for each single line. Thickening or thinning line features creates beautiful shapes with a fade-in or fade-out effect. A similar effect is achieved also by varying line color in some of the pieces.

Scribblines

What do you see when you close your eyes and your retinas still burn from computer screen light?

I Saw It in a Dream

Inspired by the shapes and colors of childhood and the exploration of planets, where translucent vinyl shapes overlay to create new colors to spark the imagination. Using the token code the location of shapes and colors are generated. Watch out for the Entity in their latent spacecraft. Based on an original artwork by Liza Grace "Colorform Multiverse"

Color Magic Planets

Mazinaw is about the timeless struggle to express our humanity and communicate the ineffable. The title derives from Mazinaabikinigan-zaaga'igan, an Algonquin word meaning “picture” or “writing”, alluding to the dual nature of pictographs. 

Inspired by my encounters with neolithic cave paintings in Europe and indigenous pictographs flanking Canadian lakes, Mazinaw hints at etchings, drawings, and anthropomorphic forms. While Mazinaw draws on expressionists from Wassily Kandinsky to Norman Lewis, it takes abstraction one step further: each piece is constructed by the artist indirectly, via a generative code, allowing the emergence of new undreamt-of forms.

The 19 palettes are inspired by the natural world, but their roles are sometimes twisted: cerulean blue strokes appear over an ochre canvas, and green flashes of light hop across a gray expanse. I invite the viewer to spend time with each piece, finding their own order from chaos. Signed fine-art archival inkjet prints will be available for owners at a modest cost.

Note: Mazinaw is best viewed in large format (full screen), or printed. Each piece has infinitely fine details, some of which will only be visible in print. Mazinaw renders seamlessly in any aspect ratio; adjust the window size and shape as desired, click on the frame, and type 'f'. 

Controls:

 s   -- save as png
 spacebar  -- pause/unpause
  f   -- toggle square / fit-to-screen aspect ratio
   1-6  -- set pixel density (default=2 on retina displays)
   +/-  -- increase/decrease pixel density
   n -- enable/disable night mode
   p -- enable/disable pastel mode

Art Blocks Presents

Augury #5

LoVid

More in Art Blocks Presents

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Orpheusk

I Saw It in a Dream

Steve Pikelny

Color Magic Planets

Bård Ionson

Mazinaw

Eric De Giuli

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