There are some great workshops this summer at Shakerag, Anderson Ranch, and Eyeo. Please consider signing up and share the information with your friends.

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Anderson Ranch (Snowmass, Colorado)
http://www.andersonranch.org/

July 16 – 20, 2012
From Digital to Physical: HYPE Framework and a Techno-Isel CNC Router
Joshua Davis

July 16 – 20, 2012
Scrapyard Challenge
Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Katherine Moriwaki

30 July – 3 August, 2012
Processing: Visualizing Data and Creating Code
Ira Greenberg

August 6 – 10, 2012
Studio Mashup: Photography, Video and Processing
Casey Reas

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Shakerag (Sewanee, Tennessee)
http://www.shakerag.org/workshops/

June 10 – 16, 2012
Moving and Shaking the World: Physical Computing for Artists
Shawn Decker

June 17 – 23, 2012
Curious Systems: Explorations in Art and Algorithmic Behavior
Chris Sugrue

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Eyeo Festival (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
http://eyeofestival.com/theprogram/

These are three-hour workshops that run on June 5, 2012

The Random Access exhibition runs from from 3 Feb to 31 March 2012 at Montserrat Collage. It features Joelle Dietrick, Reese Inman, George Legrady, Nathalie Miebach, and Casey Reas:

Each of the artists in this exhibition uses data as a source to define  the visual outcome of the pieces. Random Access explores the stories  that are revealed as data becomes visualized as works of art. Joelle Dietrick mixes data regarding foreclosed homes and Sherwin-Williams 2007  Color Forecast paints. Reese Inman uses mapping source imagery of an existing space and remixes it with the visual surface of another to  create a visualization of the space between them. George Legrady focuses on aesthetic research through integrating data mapping, data  visualization and self-organizing algorithms into interactive art  installations. Nathalie Miebach translates scientific data related to astronomy, ecology and meteorology into woven sculptures. Casey Reas illustrates the forms, behaviors, and elements that are the foundation of software that combines drawing with generative processes to explore a  network.

For the second time, I’m teaching a one-week workshop at Anderson Ranch. The Photography, Video And Processing (P1022) workshop runs this summer from 6-10 August 2012. The audience is creative coders and photographers with an interest in merging coding and photography/video. So, programmers who want to work with photo/video in their work or photo/video folks who are interested in coding. The description follows:

Interested in combining the creative potential of new photographic and software technologies? This workshop considers how modern software is used by artists to reproduce traditional tools, manipulate photographs and splice together video. Come see what happens when we combine photography with emerging ideas within creative coding to explore the potential of a hybrid image/software space. Use the Processing programming language to explore techniques such as altering images pixel by pixel and slitscanning, working with live camera feeds and scripting languages for altering images.

The details are available on the Anderson Ranch Website.

William Rowe visited my studio early this fall. He shot this interview for Protein.

Substratum issue 02 (Visual Systems) is out and it features interviews with myself and Ben Fry.

An exhibition featuring work from myself, Hans Dehlinger, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Frieder Nake, Roman Verostko, and Mark Wilson. The exhibition runs from 19 November 2011 to 14 January 2012, with an opening on 18 November from 7 – 9 pm.

Tensioned threads, a large scale mural, filigree drawings – gallery [DAM] Berlin is happy to invite you to the exhibition Think Line 2 where you can get involved with an expanded form of drawing using algorithms. The exhibited artworks range from large to small pieces from a spectrum of 40 years of media art. Along with the some pieces the exhibition attaches as well the written concept of them. This allows the viewer to follow (or understand) references and different ways of realization.

In her installation Rectangle Path Vera Molnar takes up an idea, an algorithm, from 1997 and executes this work for the first time as a thread installation of 3 x 3 m size. Rectangle Path follows the rules of concrete art, but opens up the strict concept by using an organic material. “A line is a dot that went for a walk” (Paul Klee) – after the thread has walked its long geometric path, his tail lies soft and formless on the ground.

Casey Reas presents a 4 x 3 m sized mural based on his Tissue Series. This series goes back to 2002 and visualizes the movements of thousands of synthetic neural systems creating delicate formations and a rich visual output by drawing fine lines. In an earlier interactive version of the software people were able to influence the movement of the lines by positioning a group of points on the screen.

Manfred Mohr exhibits 3 small plotter drawings from the early 1970s that he developed even before focusing on the cube. These works are shown for the first time ever.

New large plotter drawings from his series of “blurred” images will be presented by Hans Dehlinger. These pieces evoke an irritating impression of blur for the human eye by overlapping structures created by very fine lines.

The paper works from Mark Wilson are based of fine geometric multilayered structures. They are dense landscapes that Wilson creates in bright high-contrast colors. The exhibition features new works as well as a piece of 2 m length which was shown in the exhibition Ornamental Structures at the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken this summer.

Seven Sisters – The Pleiades is a series of 7 colored plotter drawings inspired by the Taurus zodiac sign. Roman Verostko created them in his typical style emphasizing the nature of a shining star by using leaf gold in the upper part of the plotter drawing. From this family of 7 similar “sister-forms”, 2 pieces are featured in the exhibition.

The delicate plotter drawings by Jean-Pierre Hébert are likewise influenced by the Asian masters. His characteristically abstract dense structures have their seeds in natural systems, but are as well the result of a precisely defined concept.

Frieder Nake, who was beneath the first representatives of this art form by exhibiting plotter drawings together with Georg Nees already in 1965, shows some of his earliest pieces.

The Gund Gallery is opening at Kenyon College this fall with an inaugural exhibition called Seeing/Knowing. It’s open from 29 October 2011 to 4 March 2012. The exhibition includes works from myself, Diana Cooper, Andreas Nicolas Fischer & Benjamin Maus, Michael Joaquin Grey, Eduardo Kac, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Benjamin Maus & Julius von Bismarck, Emma McNally, Julie Mehretu, Nathalie Miebach, Matthew Ritchie, Camille Utterback, Jorinde Voigt, and Marius Watz.

Curated by Gund Gallery director Natalie Marsh, the inaugural exhibition Seeing/Knowing explores the experience of information in contemporary art. After 50 years of new media culture—the world of TV, the internet, and virtual reality—and 50 years of new media art—creative computer-based and digital expression—technological ways of thinking have permeated the creative processes of artists working in all media. Gathering together works of art from multiple continents, Seeing/Knowing offers a global view of the expanded ways that art represents thought.

I recently asked the question, “Why do you write your own software rather than only use existing software tools?” on Twitter. These answers came back:

@sansumbrella (David Wicks)
writing is the most direct interface for describing systems and interactions.

@peregrintook
code is a medium; many tools constrain you to narrow subgenres. Knowing the fabric and pigments of the medium permits exploring more.

@voxels (Michael Edgcumbe)
so I can understand why the choices underlying the design seem like the most elegant solution

@barrythrew (Barry Threw)
Because the tools don’t exist to accomplish what I want to do. There is nothing more I would like than not to have to write software.

@robmyers (Rob Myers)
to learn, to gain understanding, to not be limited by affordances, and to be able to share all of this

@simonski (Simon Gauld)
why? because programming is a creative expression itself

@vormplus (Jan Vantomme)
because it’s easier to iterate through ideas and compositions. “Industry standard” tools don’t allow me to do this.

@brainSteen (Christopher Warnow)
When code goes through my hands, it has my gesture in it. Else it would be like painting with another cold dead hand holding a brush.

@eskimobloood (Andreas Köberle)
With other peoples software I can replicate other peoples dreams, with my own software I can dream my own.

@manovich (Lev Manovich)
Because writing software is a form of thinking and making theory; its a big part of cultural analytics strategy

@AlexKarasev (Alex Karasev)
Somebody has to write those tools! Not me; I just write “glue pieces” filling the functionality gaps. Some folks write to stay current

@miskaknapek (Miska Knapek)
1. it’s much more fun 2. existing software doesn’t conform to my way of working/desires 3. i want to be free :)

@admsyn (Adam Carlucci)
I use existing tools to make things that don’t exist yet (or I hope they don’t, anyway)

@madronalabs
Why do you write rather than just reading words other people have written?

@lankybutmacho
That’s the beauty of Processing for me: coding as exploration/research. Also, then the product can be concise & elegant without bloat.

@lennyjpg (Leander Herzog)
adobe is a cheeseburger, processing is like crack. it should have a warning on it. i gave it my hand and it ate my arm.

I spent the summer collaborating with a fantastic team to produce the Data Wall for the newly opened IBM THINK exhibit at Lincoln Center. There’s a short video on YouTube that shows the wall in motion. The wall is explained by IBM as follows:

Visitors approaching the exhibit are drawn in by striking patterns displayed on a 123-foot digital wall. The wall visualizes, in real time, the live data streaming from the systems surrounding the exhibit, from traffic on Broadway, to solar energy, to air quality. Visitors discover how we can now see change, waste and opportunities in the world’s systems.

Writing in The New York Times, Edward Rothstein wrote:

Anyone walking past Lincoln Center during the last few days, and glancing downward at its new access road, Jaffe Drive, would have seen what seemed to be a slightly eccentric art installation. A long band of animated colored lights would snake across a 123-foot-long wall of LEDs as a digital clock counted backward. Then that band might suddenly twist and wind around itself, erupt into curves, contort into waves, and, just as unexpectedly, subside again into temporary linear calm.

Or else, if you watched long enough, the wall might go blank, and when lighted again, would resemble a kind of elongated container. Bluish lights would pour inside it, mounting and sloshing about like some kind of luminous liquid, until the entire wall’s array would be filled to overflowing. And then the “liquid” would seem to spill from the sides, dripping down in cascades as the container emptied.

I was invited by Mathew Cullen and Javier Jimenez of Mirada to put a team together to develop the software for the Data Wall. We were fortunate to hire a group of extremely talented and skilled artist/designer programmers including David Wicks, John Houck, Jonathan Cecil, and Rhazes Spell. David served as the technical lead and was the primary developer of the Air Quality module. Jonathan developed Solar, John developed Finance, and Rhazes developed Traffic. As a team, the five of us worked closely with Mirada creative directors Jesus de Francisco and Kaan Atila and our clients at SYPartners, Nicolas Maitret and Susana Rodriguez. In addition, we worked with excellent concept artists to visualize the project and partnered with New York City organizations and researchers within IBM to collect and process data.

I started work in April 2011 with meetings with IBM and their partners about the data and the narratives around it. The storyboards and scripts were refined during the entire project, but they were defined enough for the developers to start programming in late May.

The wall is massive; it’s 123-feet wide and 11 feet tall. The scale is magnified by its location. It’s at ground level and in a walkway that only allows the visitors to get about 20 feet away from it. The resolution of the wall, however, it very low for the size; it’s 3696 pixels wide and 320 pixels high. The visual quality of the data visualizations were optimized for this platform.

The Data Wall has a strong tie to the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. I’m a professor in the department and John, David, and Jonathan are graduates of the department’s MFA program. Rhazes is in his second year of the MFA program.

There’s more to say, but that’s all the time I have for now. If you’re in New York from 23 September to 23 October 2011, I hope you’ll visit. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

I’m exhibiting the Maharam Digital Projects version of Process 6 (2010) in the Deep Surface exhibition in Raleigh, North Carolina. The exhibition runs from 24 September 2011 to 2 January 2012.

Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern is the first major exhibition to examine the re-emergence of ornament and pattern over the last 15 years. Deep Surface celebrates its reinvigoration as a communicative, functional, and desirable form of cultural expression, across all of the disciplines of design.

The exhibition comprises of six thematic sections and features 72 remarkably inventive works from 42 international designers and artists, including such seminal works as Marcel Wanders’s Knotted Chair, wallpaper by Paul Noble and Vik Muniz for Maharam Digital Projects, and fashions created from reconstructed second-hand clothes by Junky Styling. Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern is organized by CAM Raleigh.The breadth of the work—drawn from the fields of graphic design, industrial design, fashion, furnishings, architecture, and digital media—speaks to the pervasiveness and relevance of pattern and ornament today. Its hybrid languages are the aesthetic equivalent of the fast-paced and complex exchanges of our contemporary world.