Steve’s Stuff

Team 5 met for the first time today to discuss plans for the mini project. Our project consists of a motorized toy car that drives around a canvas making marks with mounted paint pens. The canvas is covered by motion sensors in a random configuration set to interface with Pd. The Pd patch monitors the car via the sensors and changes the audio parameters. Meanwhile, infrared sensors control the direction of the car, redirecting it when it reaches the end of the canvas.

Our project is mainly conceptual, looking at the act of painting itself, rather than being concerned with the finished product. I doing so, we’re questioning the role of the human artist in the 21st century. Although the question itself isn’t new, it also doesn’t have an answer and so we are exploring it for ourselves. Where many artists such as Brian Eno develop generative algorithms to create works of art on a computer (see Eno’s “77 Million Paintings” project - link below), we’re doing it mechanically thus replacing the predictability and precision of a computer program with the unpredictability of a moving, mechanical device. Even though Eno’s project likely incorporates random elements, and even though certain aspects of our project are ultimately controlled by a computer, there are still many opportunities of aberrant behavior on the part of the motorized car and various other environmental factors.

We are expecting the result of the automated/automotive painting to have an abstract expressionist quality, thus we are referencing that particular aesthetic in our artistic concept. We are drawing further parallels with abstraction expressionism with the use of audible statements (triggered by Pd) describing certain aspects of abstract expressionism. This also serves to distance the spectator from the subsequent painting and to force them to concentrate on the act of creation.

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/eno/