A collection of early sketches for a new piece, titled “Bridge Hypothesis”. It looks at the the bridge as a spatial stereotype, deconstructing it into formal expressions. This video was compiled from Quicktimes I saved as I iteratively experimented with and improved the code. I like that you can see the spontaneous evolution from a primitive wireframe representation, to increasingly stylized forms that reference the bridge as spatial stereotype but clearly have abandoned all regard for gravity.

I am making this piece for “Bright Nights”, an evening of projections on the anchorage of the Manhattan Bridge in DUMBO on October 7th. The event is part of a program of events in connection with the Centennial celebration of the bridge.

Bright Nights will feature the works of myself, Burak Arikan, Motomichi Nakamura and Lee Wells. The event is curated by Christina Vassallo. Practical details follow:

• October 7, 2009 / 7pm – 10pm
• Manhattan Bridge Anchorage, Front & Adams Street side in DUMBO, Brooklyn
• The event is free and open to public.

See the Random Number site for more details about the other artists.

The L key on my laptop keyboard is missing.

I dropped something heavy on it and destroyed the key socket. Life is difficult. The lack of L seriously interrupts my flow. To survive I have written a widget that copies the character L into memory whenever I click on it (that’s why I wrote the floating window hack.) I’m coping better every day. A few days ago I would simply wiggle the little stump that’s left of the key socket in the hope of producing a single character, or keep a spare L in the search field of my browser for easy copying. Now a single click will do, followed by the mental remapping of L to Ctrl-V. There are 33 L’s in this sad little story.

PS. #1. Yes, I know I can just buy an external keyboard. In fact, I’m sure I’ll cave in given a few more days. But I resent the fact that a decent keyboard is more than $100 in Norway, and I wonder how much money I’ve spent on computer mice and keyboards over the years. I seem to recall paying a preposterous amount of money for a Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard at one point. It must have been back when I was still doing consulting work. That kind of thing ruins your sense of perspective, a good consultant can always make the unreasonable seem like a good idea.

PS. #2. Thanks to CopyPasteCharacter.com for inspiring me to write my missing letter widget. Here’s a cheer for all the really difficult characters in Unicode.

Screen capture of hacked front page for Code & Form.

It seems that this blog was hacked earlier today. Someone got access to write a new index.html, which took precedence over the index.php file. It doesn’t look like any data was deleted, I guess they just wanted to waste my time a little.

I don’t whether the site was hacked through FTP or via WordPress. I’ve changed all my passwords and backed up the database and all files related to the blog, hopefully that will help.

ElectroPlastiques: Object #1 / Grid distortion

I have a new exhibition coming up in Akron, Ohio as part of an artist in residence stay at the Myers School of Art. Titled "ElectroPlastiques", it is my first ever solo show. Interesting that it would take a show in the US for that to happen, although not really so surprising given that the European media art scene is geared towards festivals. The exceptions are the few European media artists who have found gallery representation, a process that seems to be going even slower in Europe than in the US.

I’m using this show to highlight some of the existing topics of my work with realtime animation, as well as a new direction dealing with physical output. I will screen a series of my generative animations, such as Neon Organic, ElectroPlastique #1 & #2 and Illuminations A. These pieces explore the plastic qualities of parametric software processes, where a single set of rules gives rise to an infinite sequence of possible configurations. The title of the show is intended to refer to the plasticity of digital media.

As a counter-point, I will be showing manifestations of my work in physical formats, where animation gives way to other qualities. My rapid prototyping pieces Object #1 - #3 and new work like the Grid distortion laser cuts explore the tactile possibilities of digital fabrication, while prints like the Packing series go beyond the limited resolution of the screen to explore issues of graphic detail.

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Boris Müller / Satoru Sugihara / Eno Henze

The Generator.x 2.0: Beyond the Screen workshop and exhibition kicks off in Berlin this Thursday. In addition to the workshop there will be two evenings of presentations open to the general public, intended to bring the topics of the workshop to a larger audience.

The presentations will take place at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, which is also the venue for the workshop. If you’re in Berlin I hope to see you there!

Generator.x 2.0: Presentations #1 – Thu 24 Jan, 19:00 – 21:00

• Keynote: Marius Watz [NO]
• Boris Müller [DE]
• Satoru Sugihara – Morphosis [JP/US]
• Eno Henze [DE]

Generator.x 2.0: Presentations #2 – Mon 28 Jan, 19:00 – 21:00

• Aram Bartholl [DE]
• David Dessens [FR/DE]
• Tim Schork – MESNE [DE/AUS]
• Skylar Tibbits – Theverymany [US]

See the Club Transmediale site for a full list of Generator.x 2.0 events. Documentation of the event will be posted on the Generator.x blog and Flickr group as it becomes available.

Spiegel Online has just published a feature on generative art: Kunst aus dem Computer: Malen nach Zahlen (in German). It features work by myself, Neil Banas (who was blogged on Generator.x a while back) and San Base.

The opening paragraph strangely proclaims that “Marius Watz is always afraid.” (Marius Watz hat ständig Angst.) That seems to be a slighthly overenthusiastic interpretation of a comment I made about the importance of backup and having access to data while travelling. It also states that I’ve exhibited in Los Angeles, which I haven’t.

The rest of the article seems ok, if a tad superficial. In particular, I think the issue of whether or not generative art can be sold is a bit more resolved than it comes across in the article. The answer is yes, of course it can. The main challenges here are reaching collectors and museums, as well as to make sure the work is collected in a form that can be maintained for posterity.

See the following two articles at Artinfo for some pointers on the subject of selling and collecting media art:

• Code in a Box
• Conserving Pixels, Bits, and Bytes

Thanks to Christina Vassallo for providing me with these links in the first place.

The School of Interactive and Algorithmic Art (SIAA) is organizing a Digital Summer School in Sheffield this August. They will be having two-day workshops in VVVV (taught by Sebastian Gregor), Javascript in Max (taught by Jeremy Bernstein) and Processing (taught by me).

The workshops will cost £50 each and are intended for people with a working understanding of code and creative practices. The two-day format should be perfect for diving a little deeper into the field or learn a new coding platform. The number of workshop participants will be limited, so interested applicants should submit a short description of their practice and why they would like to attend.

More information on the SIAA site.

I’ve promised to post this to a few people over the last few months, but somehow never got around to it. But here it is: My blogroll.

I use Google Reader to follow about 80 feeds, which seems managable except for during very busy periods. The blogs I read cover design, art and architecture, as well as some technical subjects. Not surprisingly, the focus is towards computational work, but I also follow some more general interest design and art blogs.

This list was generated by exporting my feed subscriptions as an OPML file, then writing a quick Processing hack to output it as HTML. For those who want the actual OPML file for easy importing, here it is: mariuswatz_bloglist_070213.opml.

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Illuminations 1.1 at Club Transmediale

Illuminations 1.1 is a new version of the Illuminations piece I created for the AV.06 festival in Newcastle. It has only been shown once, and so it seemed like a good starting point when Jan Rohlf from Club Transmediale asked me to do the graphics for the festival’s printed materials.

First I tweaked the system, changing the color scheme and modifying parameter presets. Then I used Processing’s PDF output to generate one hundred vector originals for free use by the festival designers (Tine Gundelach & Chrish Klose). Daniel Shiffman’s Moviemaker library was used to generate prerendered videos for use on monitors.

Finally the system was updated for realtime projection using a dual-screen setup (2048×768 resolution, OpenGL). The projection setup at Maria am Ostbahnhof is impressive, featuring 12 projectors covering the entire main hall. The piece was shown running for two nights, except when the performing acts had their own video.

See more documentation on Unlekker (including animation) and Flickr.

I’m participating in a workshop on Site Specific Architecture and Emergent Design at Snøhetta architects, Oslo. There have been presentations by myself, Søren Sørensen (AHO), Terje Johnsen (IFE), Andreas Eggertsen (Snøhetta) and Alexander Hellervik (Snøhetta).

Søren and Terje presented some interesting projects using Augmented Reality (AR) in architectural visualization. See architect.no for more information and images.

Relevant links / inspiration

• theverymany (blog)
• Designed Objects (blog)
• Material Systems (blog)
• EZCT (architecture & design research)
• Stylianos Dritsas (Rhino3D scripting)
• Digital fabrication (blog)
• Resarch (blog)
• Lionel Theodore Dean: FutureFactories
• Krets
• Pablo Miranda Carranza