Chaos

The image above was made using the chaoscope program. It doesn't render very nicely but you get an idea of what can be achieved with it. I like the random appearance of the strange attractors and the fact that they were made using a mathematical formula. Spanish Artist Elena Asins uses this approach with her work to create.... She is a pioneer in applying structuralism and computing to art. KA PAI.

Chaos has a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It's found in flowing water, the stock market, celestial orbits, coastlines, weather...almost anything that's difficult to predict. What these systems have in common is that in order to know what will happen in the future, we need to know everything about the present with absolute precision.

Chaos is everywhere in nature, but it was a surprising discovery that it also appears in simple systems of equations . You can read a very mathematical definition here

Marcos Novak

Liquid architectures. Really good article here.
"I became curious about living
membranes and skins as architecture. Modelled on the
structure of the skeleton and the circulatory and nervous systems, most architecture is based on hierarchies of lines leading to nodes, a system which is ill-suited to provide ubiquitous services".
The image to the right shows some of his work concerning echinoderms and exoskeletons.
echinoderms are simple animals lacking brains and complex sensing organs, they also have a radial symmetry instead of bilateral like humans and mammals.


I like how he has made alien looking shapes based on organic creatures. His work looks futuristic and i love the 3D shapes that look random but aren't.

Greg Niemeyer+ Chris Chafe

An animation showing the levels of CO2 over the course of a day at a conference the artist attended. Greg studied classics and photography in Switzerland and he is now a digital artist. He wants to enhance human experience through his use of technology in his works. I don't like his photography i think it looks pretty amateur in comparison to his digital works. He likes to juxtapose the concepts of technology and nature.see video of CO2 levels here

I have been looking at this a bit through fractals and divine proportion occurring in nature, maths found in nature etc and mathematical properties of nature. If possible i would like to juxtapose concepts of mathematical equations modeling nature and naturally occurring phenomena. Looking at the chaos theory (which i know i very limited amount about), i find the concept intriguing that in theory an equation could be made to predict the weather, it makes me think that there must be an equation for everything, that everything can be pre-determined like fate.
He works a lot in collaboration with Chris Chafe, who uses the computer to aide and enhance his musical performances.
Greg Niemeyer has done research for new sound synthesis based on physics models of mechanics in musical instruments.
I would like to use some element of physics in my work, something to do with light or sound waves and exploring their properties through an interactive installation.

From Spark to Pixel- Artist Research

Erwin Redl
beautiful works using lights, installations using LED's. Some are huge e.g.' Fade III', a computer controlled out-door LED installation made in 2005 measures 50x80ft and looks amazing. Pictured on the right is 'Matrix II' made in 2005.


Shiro Takatani
Soundscapes with Rei Harakami. Really floaty and dream like...
YouTube - taicoclub-REI HARAKAMI


Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen) is internationally known for his works with light and other natural phenomena. His installations are often experimental, laboratory-like, aiming to provoke visitors to reflect upon their own processes of perception and the discrepancy between knowledge conveyed and knowledge produced by real experience. The subject of colour perception is of particular interest to Eliasson, in particular the mediation or experience of colour in space. At Ikon, Eliasson proposes to create a self-contained sculptural environment in which a colour matching laboratory is created exploring variations in human colour perception.
Check out his site

Olafur Eliasson

Technology in Early Cinema

Zoetrope
'Thaumatrope' - a small disc held by pieces of string. One either side of the disc was drawn and image which seemed to superimpose onto each other when the disc was spun. The invention of this device is often credited to astronomer Sir John Herschel but it was well known London Physicist Dr. Paris who made it popular.

In 1834, William George Horner proposed a more convenient device based on Plateau’s Phenakistoscope which eliminated the need fod for a mirror allowed several people to view the device at one time.

Horner’s idea was to take shape in the form of drum with an open top into which was placed a hand drawn sequence of pictures on a strip of paper. The pictures were placed around the inside of the edge of the drum and could be viewed through the outside of the drum.
The images gave the illusion of movement as the drum was spun. Horner referred to his device as his Daedalum.

"zoopraxiscope". Patented in 1867 by William Lincoln, moving drawings or photographs were watched through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. Modern motion picture making began with the invention of the motion picture camera.


Praxinoscope

The Praxinoscope was the result of work carried out by Frenchman Emile Reynaud. Using a drum design which revolved, as with the Zoetrope, the images were viewed reflected in a prism of mirrors which rose from the centre of the drum. Each mirror as it passed flashed a clear image opposed to it. The result was perfect animation without the loss of luminosity in movement which was experienced with the Zoetrope.

The replacement of the opaque drawings with transparent drawings meant that light could be shone through them. The light which shone through the pictures was reflected by the mirror prism and focused onto a screen through a lens.

Reynaud devised a method of painting a series of pictures on small glass plates which were joined together in a single flexible strip. The animated characters were projected onto a screen from behind.He exhibited his projecting Praxinoscope giving public performances using long broad strips of hand painted frames.
The effect he achieved was successful but was jerky and slow. In addition the labour required to draw the strips meant that Reynaud’s films could not easily be reproduced. His invention would have benefited greatly from the use of photography.

Thomas A. Edison

Most of the experimentation and research was carried out by Edison’s assistant, Dickson, with early experiments employing techniques developed with the phonograph. These involved arranging rows of tiny photographs on the outside of a cylinder with a light, or igniting sparks inside. Experiments using this idea as a starting point continued for some years.

This, a peepshow device which required viewers to peer into the top of a large cabinet where they would be treated to a minute or so of moving pictures. The first Kinetoscope prototype was ready by May 20th 1891.

In October of 1890, one of Edison’s laboratory workers Sacco Albanese was the subject for the first film to employ the cylinder method. The so called “Monkeyshines” clearly displayed the limitations of this method of presentation as viewing required huge monocular magnification, and even then the images would appear impossibly grainy. As a result, the cylinder method was abandoned in favour of film.

One of the first films made for the Kinetoscope and copyrighted by Dickson was the now legendary “Record of a Sneeze” made in early January 1894. The subject of this film was one Fred Ott and each individual frame showing his antics were recorded on paper with its own number and sent, on January 7th to the Library of Congress for copyright.

The Latham’s saw the possibilities in recording prize-fights which were against the law in many states and such fights became popular with Kinetoscope viewers. The first foreign Kinetoscope Parlour opened on October 7th 1894 at 70 Oxford Street in London but by the end of 1894 the Kinetoscope craze was dying down and Edison’s failure to patent the Kinetoscope properly meant his developments were much copied. In December of 1895, Thomas Armat demonstrated his projecting Phantoscope to entrepreneurs Raff and Gammon, who in turn approached Edison with a view to developing.

Edison, who had seen his peephole Kinetoscope losing popularity to other motion picture projecting devices such as the Lumière brother’s Cinématographe agreed renaming the Phantoscope the Vitascope and marketing under the banner “Edison’s Vitascope”. At a demonstration of the Vitascope Edison played the role of its inventor convincingly well.

Lumiere Brothers

The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis were both technically minded and excelled in science subjects and were sent to Technical School.

Antoine set up a business manufacturing and supplying photographic equipment. Joining him in this venture was Louis who began experimenting with the photographic equipment his father was manufacturing.

He developed a new 'dry plate' process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became known as the 'Etiquette Bleue' process and gave his father’s business a welcome boost, and a factory was built soon after to manufacture the plates in the Monplaisir quarter of the Lyons Suburbs. This was a big development in photography.

Antoine was invited to a demonstration of Edison’s Peephole Kinetoscope in Paris. He was excited by what he saw and returned to Lyons. He presented his son Louis with a piece of Kinetoscope film, a prototype which in today's money would have cost more then $1million, given to him by one of Edison’s concessionaires and said, "This is what you have to make, because Edison sells this at crazy prices and the concessionaires are trying to make films here in France to have them cheaper".

They identified two main problems with Edison’s device: its bulk - the Kinetograph - the camera, was a colossal piece of machinery and its weight and size resigned it to the studio. Secondly - the nature of the kinetoscope - the viewer, meant that only one person could experience the films at a time.

By early 1895, the brothers had invented their own device combining camera with printer and projector and called it the Cinématographe. Patenting it on February 13th 1895, the Cinématographe was much smaller than Edison’s Kinetograph, was lightweight (around five kilograms), and was hand cranked. The Lumières used a film speed of 16 frames per second, much slower compared with Edison’s 48 fps - this meant that less film was used an also the clatter and grinding associated with Edison’s device was reduced.

The first of such screenings occurred on 22nd March 1895 at 44 Rue de Rennes in Paris at an industrial meeting where a film especially for the occasion, Workers leaving the Lumière factory, was shown.

Louis photographed the world around him and some of his first films were 'actuality' films, like the workers leaving his father's factory. The brothers began to open theatres to show their films (which became known as cinemas). In the first four months of 1896 they had opened Cinématographe theatres in London, Brussels, Belgium and New York.

In 1907 they produced the first practical colour photography process, the Autochrome Plate.