Matt Pearson at the Big Screen Plaza
Posted by isabelwd / August 3rd, 2011 / No responsesAs part of LISA’s partnership with the Big Screen Plaza, we will be showing excerpts from Matt Pearson‘s works during the month of August on the Big Screen at the Eventi Hotel at 30th and 6th in Manhattan. We are excited that Matt is working with us for this project.
Matt writes about himself:
I’m going to issue a disclaimer before we proceed: I tried doing it the right way, I tried becoming a “real” programmer, I really did. But I failed. I started a computer science degree, but dropped out after about a year and a half. I’m sorry, but it bored me senseless.
At the time I dropped out, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than spending the rest of my days communing with these soulless beasts of logic and wires. But in adulthood, I discovered a new enthusiasm for computing after stumbling across a simple realization; that computers and computing were not the same thing. What hadn’t been made apparent to me during my university days was that computation is everywhere, and it can be a thing of beauty.
Computing is what a stream does as it finds its way downhill toward the ocean. It’s what the planets do as they move in their orbits. It’s what our bodies do as they maintain the balance needed to keep us upright…
This is why I can say, without contradiction, that while I still find computers boring, I think computing is cool. The only place computers really come into it is in attempting to simulate these computations or creating new ones to rival those of the natural world. Which brings me to the subject in hand: generative art.
My new book Generative Art – A practical guide to using Processing was spawned by a project I started in 2008. I decided that if I was going to take generative art seriously, I’d start a generative art blog. I called it 100 Abandoned Artworks and set myself the task of producing a generative artwork every week, throwing it out there in whatever state I had got it to (hence the abandoned before real-life commitments intruded on my playtime. I included the source code, Creative Commons licensed, so anyone could take my abandoned, half-finished works and find some use in them.
Selections:
Take Care – An early compilation of generative works from my 100 Abandoned
Artworks project.
Twill – This generative system was originally built as my contribution to the “Written Images” book, but I found it also worked, in a slightly simplified form, as an animation.
Big Screen Schedule:
August’s Leaders in Software and Art choices (a 60-min. loop), including works by Dennis Miller, Mark Napier, Matt Pearson, and Ursula Endlicher, are expected to show on the Big Screen at the following times (schedule subject to change. Please check schedule at http://bigscreenplaza.com before attending).
aug 1, 2pm
aug 2, 9-11am
aug 3, 10pm
aug 4, 7-9pm, 12-2pm
aug 7, 8pm
aug 10, 3pm, 7-9pm
aug 11, 1pm
aug 12, 9am, 11am
aug 13, 3pm
aug 14, 9am
aug 15, 2-3pm
aug 16, 9-11am
aug 17, 10pm
aug 18, 12-2pm; 7-9pm
aug 21, 8-9pm