Abe's Art+Code Journey // April 2024
Dear friends and Patreon supporters,
I am happy to be sending my third newsletter today :-) In case you didn't notice, I tweaked its name to make it more descriptive. The new name is probably better than the last one, but not as good as the next one ;-)
Welcome to the 14 new subscribers!
BPITY2525 autumn exhibition
I plan to present four works in my coming solo exhibition. One will be A Life Cycle, projected on a canvas and visible from the street and inside the venue.
The other three projects still need to be completed. Here, you can see a work-in-progress video of one of them. It will be visible on a small tablet display embedded in a wall, featuring a life form that continuously grows and decays.
I can't predict how different the final version will be from what you can see in this video. What happens is, each time I see it on the screen, I ask - what's next? - and it responds. Then I do what it suggests.
Most of the time, it evolves in a good direction. But when it doesn't, it is convenient to be able to rewind and try again. Git, the tool I use to keep track of all changes, lets me quickly go back to previous versions and even run them to experience their looks and behaviors.
One of the two remaining works will evolve on a large vertical display featuring new work inspired by D.A.V.E. The last one, inspired by my favorite projection-mapping video, Scintillation, will be projected on and react to a 3D surface. I'm looking forward to sharing more about these soon.
Sketch: variable scatter
At the end of March, I received a confirmation from the Parameter Art Fair in Ljubljana, part of the Adela Festival of Generative Arts. Yay! I will bring pen-plotter artworks for sale, my pen-plotter with a controller so attendees can generate custom prints, and a real-time piece to show behind me on my stand.
I am producing prints for the fair and experimenting with new ideas, including multicolored point clouds with organic designs.
Each design contains between 4000 and 6000 points. Next, I will test how these look on paper and determine if my colored markers are happy doing such a hard work. In other words… will they survive? :-)
Thumbnailer plugin
How do I deal with an ever-growing collection of works and experiments? How do I organize them? How do I find specific programs I want to reuse? I've had these issues for a long time, and I'm still looking for the right approach.
In the past, I created one folder per year and one subfolder per month and placed my creations inside. This approach works if I remember when I made something and how I named it.
Since I did not remember, I looked at my Tumblr page, where I posted my creations, found the image I was looking for, noted its date, and then opened the folder corresponding to the year and month to find the program that produced the image. It took me a minute or two, which is okay. However, I did not post pictures of all my programs and eventually deleted my Tumblr account.
My latest attempt to figure this out has been to write a plugin called Thumbnailer. This plugin creates a panel on the right side of my screen full of small thumbnails for my programs. At the top is a text field where I can type text to filter the visible programs. It even searches the source code of the programs, so if I would type "circle," it would only display programs where I drew circles.
I am not experienced in creating plugins, so I struggle with interface design. Until last week, the program displayed all thumbnails in one extremely long column. This was not great. So, I am thrilled that I figured out how to make the design "responsive," meaning that the number of columns depends on the available space.
Finally, I can watch all my programs at once. I find this super helpful, and it helps me in my work :-)
TaKe
The Khroma exhibition of A Life Cycle will end at the end of this month. Last year, while visiting Mallorca (where I grew up and went to school), I found myself in a nice restaurant called Ta-Ke (Bamboo in Japanese). It came to my mind that it would be a nice place to show my work and potentially find a buyer for the last available edition (5 of 5). I also liked bringing my work close to my friends and family so they could experience it.
Between that idea and the following photo, I did much work—not creative but administrative work. I wrote many e-mails, made calls, ordered the display and the stand, got them shipped, and flew to the island to set everything up. Until the last minute, I didn't know if everything would work out or if someone else would have to finish setting it up for me. It surprises me how much time can go into the less creative side of art.
In any case, now I am delighted to have it living there until the end of the summer. The opening evening was memorable: it made me very happy to show the work to my dad, his wife, friends, and even old colleagues I had not met in over ten years. I notice I am appreciating human connections more than I did in the past. It's as if, in the end, it's one of the few things that will really matter, together with connections to animals and nature.
Prachtsaal - my new studio in Berlin
In 2023, I worked in a shared studio on the third floor above the tax office in my neighborhood. I had six colleagues in Studio 10, but we were just three on average. It was not rare to be there by myself, which I enjoyed. It was literally around the corner, which was very convenient.
Short tangent: Day after day, I got upset when walking to/from the studio because of all the trash on the sidewalks. It kept happening until one day, I came up with the solution: do something about it!
A neighborhood improvement office lent me a litter-picking stick, and suddenly, walking to work became like a fun video game: I tried to walk at my usual speed while grabbing things with that stick. It was fun to get better at it, and making my little world a better place felt very good.
But back to my studio: I enjoyed Studio 10, even if most of my colleagues were not artists, and I missed a sense of community or collaboration.
Last December, two of us noticed an open call from Prachtsaal Berlin. Without much hesitation, we applied and were quickly accepted. Initially, we had to pay for both studios, but we didn't mind because it was exciting to join an art collective.
We are about 15 creatives working in this 100-year-old dance school. It's on the ground floor with a kitchen and a garden with trees, almost 400m².
We are setting up a non-profit organization and improving the space for future public events. It involves some work, but our collective has the experience and motivation to make things work. We've already had art exhibitions, screenings, events, and meetups.
There used to be a creative hub in Berlin called Spektrum. It connected hundreds of people in many thriving communities. Prachtsaal will bring back some of what got lost when Spektrum closed a few years ago.
Photo of the month
Much of my inspiration comes from what I see, from nature and its textures, shapes, and behaviors, and sometimes from decaying human creations.
One aspect that I find fascinating is that sometimes the process is reversed: I write a program that produces images or animations, and later, I discover similar patterns in the world.
One could think that the world inspired me unconsciously, and I only noticed after producing my work. But at least sometimes, I think this is not the case: I first create something, then I go to a place I have never visited before, and there I encounter something that resembles my creation.
What I think is probably going on is that there is a connection between math and the world. Simple mathematical formulas can reproduce many shapes found in nature. Sometimes, complexity arises from applying simple algorithms over and over. And even if I know this, it does feel magical at times :-)
I hope you enjoyed this e-mail. Feel free to send me your feedback, questions or suggestion.
Until the next one! :-)
aBe PaZoS SoLaTie
Art & Code