Made partly in a Generator.x 2.0 workshop, Andreas Nicolas Fischer’s ‘A week in the life’ is a three dimensional visualisation of movement and communication made with a cell phone during a week roaming around Berlin. Using bespoke software written for his mobile phone, Andreas was able to record the longitude and latitude of his position in the city. The data was then passed to a Processing sketch, which resulted in the 3D representation. WMMNA extracted the following info regarding the journey from Processing to final data sculpture:

‘The model was then taken into Rhino and contoured into horizontal and vertical 2d layers. The intersections were set and vectors cleaned in illustrator. After that individual parts were cut with a laser cutter and assembled into the final work.’ Continue reading

Marius Watz: ElectroPlastiques :: Until April 23, 2008 :: Emily Davis Gallery, Folk Hall, Mary Schiller Myers School of Art, The University of Akron, Ohio.

Watz uses the computer to generate work which he describes as “a particular brand of visual hedonism, marked by colorful organic shapes and a ‘more is more’ attitude.” Most of his works deal with drawing machines implemented in software, live visuals for music or large-scale projections. The exhibition will showcase a variety of Watz’s generative work, including large scale projections of ElectroPlastiques #1 and #2, five rapid prototypes, large format printouts, and his Universal Digest Machine, which received an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica — the world’s leading media arts festival in Linz, Austria. Continue reading

(Essay for Share Festival Catalog 2008) (Here is my slide presentation, related to the essay below. But, I did not read this essay at the festival, rather it was printed in the festival catalog.)

There are a few things to say about manufacturing, design and digital arts. First, we’re not talking about manufacturing. Manufacturing is about making things on a large scale using machinery. Manufacturing evokes cavernous, cold, awesomely huge assembly lines with scales all out of proportion to the experiences of mere mortals. Factory floors throwing sparks, littered with metal shavings, huge overhead cranes moving impossibly large masses of steel – this is what manufacturing means. Continue reading

Piemonte Share Festival: Manufacturing – Guest Curator: Bruce Sterling :: March 1-16, 2008 :: Torino, Italy.

The theme for the 2008 edition, which will dominate the contents of the conferences, round tables, workshops and performances, is the new materiality of digital arts. In the 90s the net art phenomenon addressed a need to reach beyond its own limits, drawing immateriality into the equation and threatening the real. Nowadays, society relates to technologies in a natural way by allowing the immaterial to become real. Continue reading

Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen – Workshop / Exhibition / Performance :: Call for Participation :: January 24 – February 2, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse [DAM] :: part of CTM.08 – Unpredictable – Festival for Adventurous Music and Related Visual Arts, Berlin.

Generator.x in collaboration with Club Transmediale and [DAM] presents Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the screen, a workshop and exhibition about digital fabrication and generative systems. Digital fabrication (also known as “fabbing“) represents the next step in the digital revolution. After years of virtualization, with machines and atoms being replaced by bits and software, we are coming full circle. Continue reading