Oldskool: Sketches 1994-1998)
I just posted a sequence of old sketches to Flickr, ranging from 1994 to 1998 and showing some of my earliest computational work. Actually, since I never drew or worked visually in any other non-computational way after age 12, it is also some of my earliest visual work of any kind.
While some of the images are deeply mired in the techno aesthetic I was so taken with at that time (after all, I had just turned 20 and these were the 1990’s), others point to the beginning of a generative approach. Some of the basic ideas about form and structure expressed in these pieces are still with me today (see Kugelstudie or Illuminations for proof).
These are some of my favorites:
You can still see these pieces on my Evolutionzone web site as part of the historical section, but that design was done in 1996 and is painful to look at now. Seeing the images on their own in the pristine Flickr interface makes me look at them in a different way. It still feels a bit vulnerable to expose them to public viewing like this, but I figure it’s not a bad thing.
The 3D images were rendered in POV-Ray, my first ever visual tool.
good to see old work, some of the works remind me of william latham’s work
Well observed, you are completely correct. I picked up Latham’s “Evolutionary Art & Computers” in 94, and it was one of my main influences at that time. I have some other old sketches somewhere that would show that reference even more clearly.
its strange Latham has dropped off the face of the net.. if the net has a face..
That’s not quite true. His inaugural lecture at Leeds Metropolitan University can be viewed on their site. I still haven’t sat through it, but someone (Toxi?) blogged it a while back.
Just had a look on Amazon, seems his old book is now a collectible. It’s selling for £60 upwards used…
His new site just went live recently.
Excellent, thanks for the link, Matt!