Sunday, October 03, 2010

Expanding the Medium

My original interest in computational design was interaction. I used to program a lot of interactive toys similar to what was popular in the early 2000s when Flash was getting popular.

My interest in interaction did not hold because it started to move towards developing 'final' images as art. So interactive art was only a means to develop static art. I've always wanted to be some sort of artist and I couldn't really draw. I stunk with Photoshop and the only joy I get with generating art was in programming. After a long while with tinkering with interactive arts, I started focusing on "finished art."

My move towards art on a static medium is what prompted me with starting this blog. I still develop a lot of interactive toys. All images posted on this blog are generated with interactive algorithms. The only difference is that the interaction is solely limited to me as opposed to posting the interactive piece online for everyone to play. This gives me more ownership of the images.

After a few years of this, I am a little bit frustrated that the Algorithmic/Generative/Computational art genre has not gained a lot of acceptance in the world. It is still a growing genre and is experiencing a lot of resistance in the art world. The growth pattern is akin to the resistance to photography as an artform.

I sometimes find myself arguing with critics about the legitimacy of this particular art and I yearn to find more exposure for this genre.

Enter the iPhone.

A few innovative souls like Glenn Marshall and Scott Snibbe has started using the iPhone as a platform for their art. Why not? With the advent of the iPad, it is a viable platform to display your digital art.

I aim to take advantage of this.

So the plan for the next couple of months is to port some of the interactive toys I created to the iPhone and either give it away for free or sell it for a dollar. The intent is to generate awareness of the brand. I'm hoping people will like the little art-app enough to maybe...just maybe purchase a print or two. Of course, if the art-as-app app takes off, I'm hoping to get a little bit of return from it as well.

So...that's the plan for now. We'll see where it goes.

Below is the first iteration of the first App I am producing. It should be ready within a month and available for free.

Untitled4Now

Watch out for the new interactive wing of http://aut.ologo.us called http://www.autologousinteractive.com.

http://www.autologousinteractive.com will be the official website for the iPhone projects that I will be working on. I'm hoping to port some of my art-apps on the site. Also have a couple of games in mind as well.

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