A collaboration with Anna Beller
Artworks on Verse
Details on X
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.