Draftwerk





DRAFTWERK
type. Short-form Generative Art + Physical
date. 06-2023
platform. Verse
editions. 53
A collaboration with Anna Beller
This series is a collaborative study on vectors and space, exploring the intersection of generative and intuitive, digital and physical, robotic and human. Alejandro and Anna engage on a creative game between artist and machine: creative coding, digital curating, pen-plotting, physical taping and spraying in several steps. A game of rules and interpretation, typology and intuition, all starting from the most simplest idea: the intersection of vectors.
What kind of serial artworks can be created by the clash of two vectors? What happens when layers of vectors meet and intersect? What are the vectors, and the space in-between, how are they arranged, are they dense, loose, well organised or chaotically laid? Is it possible to find a logic, to create some rules? Can we create individual, intuitive artworks following logical, automatic systems? How do we combine digital and physical?
Alejandro created a generative algorithm and a tool to curate vector arrangements in overlapping steps. The tool randomly defines a set of vectors and produces an underlying grid with hatches and rectangles that follow a simple rule agreed by the two artists: a rectangle appears once the vectors meet, a hatch is created when the vectors intersect within the grid subdivisions.
Anna selected a set of 53 iterations, fine-tuning the smallest details. The selection was plotted on paper by Alejandro. She then followed the second agreed rule: to connect the start and end points of the vectors in preset steps, and to make a painting out of it. What’s the size of the colourfield? How are the painting-borders, the size of the vectors and the colourfields? With different taping methods and the use of spray paint, she found a big field of possibilities, full of potential and unpredictability.
A generative algorithm produces a random output following an underlying logic.
The artists react to it, intuitively leading it to completion.
It is by no means different than the inhabitant creating a place within the architect’s logical system, finding a way to live in a meaningful in-betweenness. “On the other side of the subjective, on this side of the objective, on the narrow borderline where I and you meet lies the In-between Realm”.
Signed paintings are claimable via Artfora
RELEVANT LINKS
ARTWORKS on Verse
DETAILS on twitter
CLAIM PLOT on Artfora