Organomorph 2

Fine Art From the Alternative Nature of Virtual Worlds - Digitally Applied Acrylic Paint on Canvas

Organomorph 2

Organomorph2 This image was created by the morphing together of two 3D raytraced "virtual world" images, utilizing an artificial life routine to drive the control points in the morphing engine. Both of the virtual world images themselves are renderings of 3D artificial lifeforms, which were subsequently morphed together with an artificial lifeform driven process, hence the title, "organomorph". This is one example of a series of "experiments" in which the hidden asthetic potential of a synthetically derived "virtual world" was discovered through procedural means.

"Synthetic entities" have the potential of "spawning" an infinite variety of forms, structures, and textures not viewable via any other means.

The history of the future is already evolving . . .

presented at ALife VI - Artificial Life VI conference, UCLA, 1998 - Digital Biota Workshop / Aesthetics of Artificial Life Art Exhibit Aesthetic Exploration in the "Virtual Nature" of Synthetic Environments and Artificial Ecologies

The "Aesthetics of Artificial Life" expo event

This is how I actually see the universe, and use a variety of technical tools and processes, combined with computational resources to allow "access" to other parallel universes. In the various shows and galleries I have appeared in, these images are usually presented either as numbered and signed dye sublimation prints, or as digitally applied archival quality acrylic paint on canvas. Please note the attatched image file, which is a photograph of a canvas example. Peer into the workshop, and "virtual gallery" of Berkeley Designs for a glimpse of the foundry from which these various experiments in evolving artforms are spawned, and proliferate.

Spawning entities, flourishing on the virtual terraform - I don't "draw" art, I grow it.Driven by a fascination with structure, form, and the mechanics of interactive forces as they occur in nature, the goal is to create scenes which are the results of compuational models based on these characteristics. Virtually all constructs observed in the nature of the "real world", such as the branching structures of trees, the construction of a leaf or flower, the distribution patterns of stars in a galaxy, pebbles on a beach, or even the wispy forms of a cloud, can be defined and replicated with a series of formulae and procedural algorithms.

Once these processes have been defined and established as a procedural set of rules, these rules can be modified or "distorted".

There is vast potential for asthetic discovery in synthetic environments which actually contain the dynamic elements of an evolving "organism" or ecosystem.

This is the real power of the computer, to be able to create structures and forms, as a process, utilizing interactive forces and influences, as they occur (or don't occur) in nature, to spawn the contents of a scene. It is in this way that "impossible" virtual worlds can be explored, ranging from chaotic events that defy the "ordinary" rules of nature, to the evolution of artificial life forms flourishing in synthetic environments.

As described in the excerpt from my paper titled "Virtual Reality as an Art Medium", is both the theory and application of utilizing the computer as a computational engine to create synthetic environments and quasi-organic entities flourishing in these virtual realms, as an alternative form of nature (both at the nano and "macro" scale). In this context, the computer can "discover" asthetic content as well as functional models of such domains, not unlike the way a photographer may "discover", and capture the asthetics of nature as it occurs in the "real" world.

In this context, the computer can be utilized as a type of computational camera

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