A video documenting my approach to visual research in terms of thematic interests and image-making techniques.
This video documents my research and image-making process.
My art practice is centered on overlapping themes in natural pattern formation, decorative pattern, and the life cycle. And utilization of computer graphics techniques to simulate natural form and manipulate original photographic documentation of ecology in the spirit of approaches to utopian ideal in the history of design. With those themes in mind, I keep a running list of ideas to explore pictorially, and literature that would inform my practice.
Here is a list of readings from the past three years that have inspired me either thematically or procedurally. Generally speaking these come from one of three areas — computational design methodology, design history and theory, or biological systems modeling.
Non-fiction literature from these fields may inform my art making directly in terms of providing a particular procedure or other logical methodology to mimic in the planning of an image. Otherwise, I read for ethnographic purposes — to get a deeper understanding of a particular discipline of science, or historical perspective on design, as cultural phenomena. Regardless, a core theme in my reading is experimental attempts to manipulate and reshape our understanding of reality. I find this mindset a constructive thematic background for artmaking.
Photographic documentation is also a core part of my practice. Photography has become a way for me to honor the beauty of life and ubiquity of ecosystems. I use my photographs as original focal points to manipulate, frame, reproduce, or draw from later.
When I set out to make an image I have a particular set of methods I aim to explore. If I do not have a particular image I am looking to make, but want to spend time sketching, I will often instead try recreating another artist’s work, say a visual effect that I enjoy or canonized form to learn more from the processes of others who have mastered certain techniques. This diversifies my skill set, and of course, seeing further is only possible by standing on the shoulders of giants.
My artwork generally demands that I either create or work with a pre-built system of interacting variables. Once I have a basic image-generation workflow down, I engage in an iterative design process where I explore the parameters of the system to get an intuition for how they work together, and ultimately choose input values, or ranges of values, that result in an aesthetic appropriate for my goals.
Currently, my artwork usually results in a high resolution image or motion graphic representing the final process output, but in the future I want to be applying this digital data to material processes to create the terminal form. I also want to be more serious about engaging with methods borrowed from computational biology, and I want to be more direct in using references to pattern design in the history of the decorative arts.
When finished, I also make efforts to clean and document my code and project files as these become important references to refer back to for the next project.