Beautitude :: Preemptive War (2005) This new painting (48"x 24", oil & acrylic on canvas) represents a real breakthrough for me in terms of technique, Class IV aesthetics, artistic anatomy, and my evolving ideas about political art. Come see the painting and get lost in the details.  Check out my artist talk/commentary about the painting (for those select few of you who, as I do, enjoy hearing about artists talk about their work) at the bottom of the painting page. While I'm pushing that Barrocos-Neobarracos fusion with the abstract gestural, do note that on the wall behind the painting in this image are 3 influences.  Surely, you recognize the toes of Ingre's La Grande Odalisque.  On top of that (top right hand corner of image) is my muse, the Wolfram rule 1599, a 1D totalistic CA.  Below that pinned to the wall is one of the first generative monotype experiments I did in 2003 (Bring on the dancing lobsters!)
	And a culture jamming conceptual detail worth pointing out is in the far left bottom.... my new signature -- I lick my right thumb and make a thumb print on the final layer of the painting.  Yes, that way when this art is deemed de-generative by our current administration, they will be able to quickly cross reference my prints and DNA in my file!  My small contribution to making our Homeland Security more efficient -- in the spirit of the Arlo Guthrie song, Alice's Restaurant...if alot of us do it, they'll call it a movement.   But let's push deeper... this thumb print is placed upon the spirit line I create at the bottom right of my painting.  In working on the NKS Opera project with the tapestry as a theme, I learned about the spirit line from the Dineh women weavers who weave a thread at the end of their rug tapestries so that their spirit can leave the creation for their next one.  I incorporated this practice during my Take Heart :: Wind Horse paintings.
September 11, 2005	Class IV Aesthetics -- Cry Me An Ocean Over the summer, I have been pushing my experimentation in Class IV aesthetics  -- that is, using abstract expressionist gesture fused with Baroque techniques to mine the primal, and to explore the complexity of the Wolfram Class IV computational universe.  I've uploaded work from several series in progress, on the themes of human rights and nature.   This experimentation found ground in the painting I did for The Wall-Las Memorias AIDS wall on the theme of AIDS and spirituality.  The painting, First The Forest Died, set up a challenge in taking this technique into figurative abstraction. As the details of these works show, it is a delight to continue to discover new potential in this technique, whereby the aspects of generative process, emergence, ambiguity and paradox cohere for new expressions and, hopefully, new meanings.   Special thanks to Rudy Rucker for his concepts and enthralling work on his High Gnarl.  Go to Amazon and buy his new book! Cry Me An Ocean and September 1, 2005  were sparked by the sorrow and dis-grace of the Katrina tragedy and the dire American urban and rural poverty and government response it exposed.   While the outpouring of charity and heroic rescues have been uplifting, there are human rights dimensions --- and obligations -- to the resettlement and reconstruction undertaking.    Minar Pimple of PDHRE shares this important human rights learning resource in the working document, International Human Rights Standards on Post-Disaster Resettlement and Rehabilitation.   These standards can shape our discussions and actions at not just the international level, but also at the national, state, local and community levels... and in our art!  Another network is the US Human Rights Network, bringing human rights home. And then in the studio, along with the heart-felt songs of the Delta Blues, the subtle change of seasons has been heralded with new cohabitants, and concomitant cairns:

     

22 May 2005

Tomorrow, I'm giving a talk at the International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS2005) at Emory University on the last 12 months of my work in art & science on complexity and abstract painting.  Dr. Jiri Kroc organized the Modeling Complex Systems by Cellular Automata workshop -- and has been a great avatar and guiding force in my adventure and collaboration in these scientific proceedings!

I've uploaded the pwerpt presentation as well as the Lecture Notes in Computer Science paper in my musings section, plus a longer version of the invited submission of the International Journal of Unconventional Computing.

Stayed tuned for a radical upgrade in the quality of my images on this site.  It's about time, eh?

31 March 2005



Celebrate with me a petit vernissage (the first unveiling) of my new series/work-in-progress, Take Heart :: Windhorse. 

Come visit the studio and then probe the emergent eddies (details) of the paintings.

These are the first of a series of 18 paintings (each 6 feet by 4 feet, acrylic on canvas).  I'll be presenting two at the Center for Cultural Innovation's artist business workshop for artists with dealers, curators, and gallery owners on 2 April.

I feel that the last 2 represent a breakthrough for me, particularly in working large scale.   Adam Pattantyus gifted me the title with the concept of windhorse.  It speaks to living with fearless joy, compassion and power in dark times.  I have been working with Caravaggio's palette and illumination out of chiascuro, using the technique of Baroque glazings for the backgrounds.  At the end, each painting has anywhere from 10 to 15 layers.

These paintings are part of my ongoing experimentation with complexity and abstraction, investigating the unconscious use of simple rules as an algorithm/simple program to create complex art.  I'm working on articulating the process.  Essentially, the result is generatively built, starting with a "seed" at the top of the painting, then progressing down its evolution in its "paratime" (the drips to evoke the grid).  As the painting grows, it expands into our space-time axis, "reaching out" into our lives.  At any glance (cognitively we scan from point to point), we can see the "now" moment as a fusion of the past (above the point) and future (below the point).  If the painting fires our neurons to produce endorphins in our frontal lobe, we can experience transcendence. 

This latest inspiration was sparked by computer scientist/father of cyberpunk literature, Rudy Rucker, who is about to publish his new book:  The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, which dances metaphysically with "gnarly" (his word for NKS Class 4 rules) computation.  Check out his diagram and then his explanation on The 2005 Edge Annual Question ("What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?")  He gives me the courage to play and continue to follow my muse, the 1599 algorithm!

I've also uploaded the complexity and abstract painting paper which was accepted for publication for the ICCS2005 proceedings. On the basis of this, I've just been invited to submit a longer paper to the Journal of Unconventional Computing.

14 February 2005

Welcome to my new work:  Probing The Eddies of Dancing Emergence in exploring abstraction and complexity.

This is part of my on-going collaboration with composer Katarina Miljkovic, in filming the details of my paintings close-up.  We're in the process of preparing for the debut of the performance, The Music Theatre of Katarina Miljkovic, at The Guarnerius Center of Arts in Belgrade on 16 May 2005.

Check out the New Kind of Science forum at Wolfram Science for my recent post about my research on whether NKSesque patterns of complexity appeared in antiquity, specially in Upper-Paleolithic cave art and Neo-Confucian patterns of li categories.  

Also, my Dancing Emergence work was highlighted in the "It's About Artists!" section of the Center for Cultural Innovation Winter 2004 newsletter.  They are a great organization worthy of any support you can give.

28 August 2004

In solidarity and celebration with the Imagine04 art festival going on right now in Manhattan, I'm pleased to announce the opening of my new exhibition, Dancing Emergence. These 16 abstract paintings came out of my experience at the three week New Kind of Science Summer Institute at Brown University in June, led by Stephen Wolfram and the Wolfram Research Institute team. Amazingly I was able to discover a new visual language for myself in the midst of "extreme" science, Mathematica programming and exploring the computational universe of the first dimension.

25 August 2004:

Stand by for the launch of 2 new exhibitions....

• Dancing Emergence  --- A show of 16 new paintings. 

•  Greeting the Muse -- An experimental short film exploring the artistic experience/expression of cellular automata, combining paintings I created during this summer's New Kind of Science Summer Institute at Brown University and music composed of computational rules by Katarina Miljkovic of New England Conservatory of Music.

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11 June 2004:

No impunity!  These were the cries of societies coming out of the juntas.  No one is above the law.

The United States exists in a community of nations where the universal language of humanity is human rights and the existential glue is the rule of law.

Words of outrage cannot begin to express my pain, shock and horror that the systemic torture in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and Iraq was in fact policy.   

If our present leaders in the White House cannot understand the moral and legal framework forbidding torture, how can we ever join the world community in enacting the Convention on the Rights of the Child?  

Are we as a nation so far gone?  For all the rhetoric and pomp of values and flag-draped coffins, are universal human rights not American values?  Are these not human values?

It is time to take America back:  Human rights are the minimum standards of governance.

I join Bruce Springsteen in showcasing former Vice President Gore's recent words of eloquence as this Bush Administration is beginning to be subjected to the Vampire Test --- bring on the searing light of democracy.

Please read the full text of the Gore speech and act.  Now.  Not just for the sake of our victims, but for the very soul of our nation.

http://brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html

5 May 2004:

Prints of the first seven plates of my etching cycle Bride of Mars:  The Americana of Militarism, Motherhood & Nukeporn, Or Dancing the Alchemy of Post-Trauma  are on view as an installation at the Cypress College Fine Arts Building Main Lobby from 5 -15 May in Cypress, CA.

This project seeks to break new ground in both etching as well as the graphic novel/sequential art mediums, while honoring the tradition of Kathe Koellwitz, the amazing German printmaker (1867-1945), in expressing a woman's experience of war.  The entire cycle is 57 plates.  The first seven plates serve as a proof of concept in the innovation.  

Come join us for the opening on 6 May from 6-8 PM.

22 April 2004:  

My acrylic on aluminum experiments, NKS Translucida, will be exhibited at the NKS2004 Art Gallery from 22-25 April.  See:  http://wolframscience.com/conference/2004

If you are in the Boston area, please come see the show at the Boston-Waltham Westin Hotel (see http://wolframscience.com/conference/2004/logistics.html for directions).  Plus come experience some awesome musician artists unveil their latest music software engine that generates the sound dimension of cellular automata rules and begs for a visual interpretation of the algorithms themselves!  We know what it looks like, but how does it feel?

14 April 2004:  

The first episode of my war cycle of etchings as a work-in-progress will be part of a group show at Cypress College from 7-15 May. Stand by for postcards! 

Bride of Mars:  

The Americana of Motherhood, Militarism and Nukeporn, or Dancing the Alchemy of Post Trauma

A cycle of 57 etchings in the form of an artists book cum graphic novel after Köllwitz, Kentridge and Clausewitz.  The work explores a woman veteran's journey through PTSD recovery and her evolving worldview post-September 11 and fuses the traditional 17th century medium of intaglio etchings with contemporary experimental sequential art.