Mark Here

For our second project, we were asked to create a machine that produced a mark. After Lego Music, I wanted to present something that was more of an in class process than a personal process. Using a notepad with a massive Sharpie attached the class was instructed to "Mark On Me" and "Mark With Me". The notepad circulated around the class well and made its way back to me intact. Some of the marks were humorous, others were simply words. I intended for my project to be an idea that started in my brain and translated itself through others. In my opinion, the essence of art itself follows the same chain of events. An artist thinks, creates, and the audience translates that original thought into their own language. This language then goes on to possibly influence an action, another person, a future piece of art, or maybe it dies right after the viewer moves on. Regardless, the transfer of thought to interpretation is a process that can change fail or succeed and I'd like to work based on this in the future.

Raptors? For Realz?

In addition to Brook's highway signs.....

¡Cuidado!

I stumbled upon this site and it made me think how easy it is to make yourself the authority we questioned in class.

A question that intrigued me was, why does a sign "make it official"? Would Robert's caution tape project have been as effective if he stood at the door and told people they couldn't enter there? I think maybe the presence of a sign takes away the argumentative side of authority. You can't ask a sign "why not" but you can definitely ask a person "Why the hell can't I go this way". People don't question authority enough in my opinion and the result is the acceptance of rules that are unnecessary.

Eddie Mac!

Eduardo MacEntyre is an Argentinian painter from the 1950's. Trained in technical drawing, he later became the "founder" of geometric abstraction, calling this art at the time "arte generativo"... generative art. His main focus was on the complexity of an incredibly simplistic concept, the curved line. I couldn't find a great deal of information on his process or more about his life or work, but his paintings are all so intricate, you can see for youself his fasination and work with the process and evolution of curved line and it's relation to a neverending circle.

Lego Music

Greg Jalbert suggests a definition of generative art as...

"art where the main technique of development within a piece or series of pieces is an evolutionary process, like biological or physical evolution, or the evolution of ideas. This might mean that the intent of the work is to make evolution the primary message. Evolution involves a complex process of development with many possible influences. Much of art involves generative processes of development, selection of work for various reasons. These reasons include everything from emotional impact, to beauty, to commercial appeal, to personal fullfillment, to social propaganda, and more."

I think this a an excellent start to explaining generative art. With this definition in mind, I wish we would have ended our first class period with more of a solid opinion as to what generative art is. With such an opinionated group of people, the arguments and discussions we engage in are always interesting and insightful, but I feel that we never come to a closing point with anything.

Anywho, I would have liked to have the understanding of generative art I have now when we were given our first machine assignment. Although there was definitely an evolution of my Lego sound producing machine, I don't feel I thought about the bigger picture, or the process of the whole project and not just how to make my machine work, enough. It was a good starting point though, and I did take into account what I would do differently and the different aproaches that can be taking to our generative art.

The difficulties I encountered with my Lego Music machine were, for the most part, little additions and subtractions to the Lego structure itself. Process wise, my thoughts were quite simple. I knew I needed to use objects in my house due to low budget issues. The symbol was the first tool I decided to use. After a series of trial ramps, nothing seemed to be the right size or have the ability to become more structural to ensure my lack of involvement in the piece. Out of an insane coincidence I realized Legos would definitely be the best tool to complete my project. Think about it, you can make ANYTHING with Legos!! After many slight additions and subtractions it was a consistently working machine. I totally concerned myself more with the "rules" than the outcome, the effect, or the significance. It was a good starting point, and I saw many more factors that I considered in my second project.