New Book: EVOLUTION HAUTE COUTURE
From the website:
The National Center for Contemporary Arts (Kaliningrad Branch, Russia) presents Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age, 1 Volume – Practice. The first volume of anthology is a printed catalogue with descriptions, technical info and photographs of art projects, as well as a unique collection of 45 documentary films on [...]
Animation Practice
I spent a little time over the holiday brushing up on some animation techniques. Jason Ryan has a series great tutorial videos and an easy-to-use rigged robot character named Boris that goes along with the tutorials. My interest is not in the disney/warner bros. style exaggerated movement, but in the techniques themselves. Learning to identify [...]
Fallen Revised
Exhibited first in 2006 with 5 sequences, Fallen is a looping 3d animation of a monstrous creature who falls, repeatedly, through empty space. Simulated dynamics and special effects are used to generate the characters behavior rather than keyframes. I’ve recently expanded the animation to 15 sequences and re-rendered it with a white background.
The reason or [...]
Character Study: Developments
The form (morphology) of walker has changed slightly. He has longer, thinner legs, feet have been added, and the body/sphere is smaller. The ground is pink checkers rather than green, and the parameters of the simulation itself have been altered. The most significant change is that gravity has been lowered by half. The new settings [...]
Character Study: Background
The program I’ve been using to evolve “Walker” animations is an open source evolutionary simulator called Breve. It was developed by Jon Klein and is based on evolved virtual creature studies done by Karl Simms. I don’t remember where I first ran across simulations of creatures “learning” to move, but I was immediately struck by [...]
“…disorientation begets creative thinking.”
In an article titled “How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect,” the New York Times describes studies indicating that anomalous experiences–encounters with things that don’t make sense–invigorate our brain’s drive to find meaning, which it does by seeking patterns. It seems maintaining coherence is such a strong imperative for us that our drive and ability to do [...]
new book On Monsters
Peter Olson at the NIU Art Museum called my attention to a new book, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of our Worst Fears, which will be released in a few weeks. From the jacket cover:
Monsters. Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, they have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. They [...]