Generative drawing: 7-drawing progression

This recent set of drawings uses time constraints and masks. The paper cutouts allowed me to "erase" earlier areas of the drawing and continue adding lines. This series of drawings represent about 95 minutes. The drawings were added to my flickr set: Generative Sketches

Here's a set of drawings from the middle of the series, showing the masks that erased information from the earlier drawing to make way for the later one.

Constraints:
I chose six different time durations from zero to thirty minutes, then sorted them shortest first. These times would be the allowable time limit to make a drawing.

I then chose blank paper and cut different simple shapes out of them, sometimes keeping the cutout, and sometimes keeping the window. These would be used to block out relatively random areas of the drawings. I say "relatively random" because in making some larger and smaller I had at least some idea of their effect. The new drawing would be continued from wherever the earlier one was still visible.

When the time duration would run out, I taped on the next mask, started the timer for the new limit, and drew until the next interval expired. (Not measured was my stopping every time to scan the starting point, the mask itself, the mask in place causing erasure.)

The process unfolded pretty much as I expected. Though I admit to one cheat: The last mask (for the seventh drawing) happened to be quite small and the anticipated time duration was a full 30 minutes. I simply could not pack that much drawing into the space. Or more specifically, I certainly might have tried, but the character of the drawing would have been very different from the earlier ones. And so I drew until it seemed really full but not painfully so, stopping at about 19 minutes.

Time durations:
I like the way the time duration and the mask size tend to control the density of the lines. I wasn't slavish about how much I filled the mask shape itself, and there was a fight between the way I usually spread out the lines and the way that the mask hemmed me in. But in the future I could easily make the rule that I must use the whole mask for new drawings.

Future efforts?
I want to not sort the time durations in that way; I think the drawings will be more interesting.

That's all for today.

Improvisational Abstract Drawings: Modular Baroque

Modular Baroque
Drawing, Folding, and Improvisation
August 13, 2014

I make lots of drawings freehand, sometimes under constraints. Maybe I’ll set a number of drawings per day. Maybe I’ll set a time limit. I’ve come up with a new constraint that has to do with folding paper before or after.

This is not a new game.

At the end of the process, three separate sheets emerged, presenting “whole” drawings.





The progression of division and redrawing, from start to finish was a little too complicated to remember, and it happened in just under a hour: 58 minutes. I folded the first blank piece of paper, and then drew across the fold (yielding A1 and A2). Then I unfolded the paper and connected the two separated parts (A3). For the second sheet, I folded a blank sheet and aligned it against one of the existing folds in the first sheet. (At this point I lose track of what I did.)

Of the eight results, a few are annotated below:





Results?
I like the results just fine. The accuracy needs lots of improvement and that can happen with good ol’ hand and eye coordination. Or, perhaps digital drawing techniques one day when I have the technology. Or better still: use these results to create cleaned-up versions through tracing paper. The versions will not match up after that point, but I think the spirit of the project will still be true.

Improvisation
I’ve done over 1000 drawings as single, one shot efforts. But this was something newer because I started to think of how the connections would affect other drawings. Whether a fold exists before the drawing happens or after a drawing happens is probably going to be pretty important.

If a fold exists and I draw over it, I know ahead-of-time. But what if the drawing is in an area that hasn’t got a fold, and then I fold it to get a new modular area to branch from? I think this second situation will divide up the drawing in a way I’d probably avoid otherwise. This leads to a little more challenge for me.

I’ll have to try it soon.

Scans of the drawings involved here are viewable over on flickr.com in my “Drawings 2014” set. (By the time you read this, they might not be the most recent ones there.)
There are eight variations!

Time to get back to work making more drawings. Thanks for reading.

a brief explanation of my generative art paper, due early November

Everyone wants to know what 'generative art' is. I didn't know, either. In general, generative art will look to you like much of the abstract art that's been happening for decades. Your first reaction to art calling itself generative art is that the artist must have used a computer in some way, and quite possibly for everything. My explanation is that the artist has come up with ways to "defer" some part of the deciding or inspiration process, or part of the manufacture process to a machine, or program, or to chance. There is usually some form of repetition or iteration, given that computers do this so exactly and so well.

For my paper, my specific take on generative art is that I've designed a basic set of instructions for building sculptures by hand, much in the way you "build" dinner using a recipe or "build" a vacation using a map. In all of these, variations are likely and, as a Doctor might say, "not deleterious." The sculptures I will present as slides will be variations on that basic set of instructions. The important part of my presentation is to explain ahead of time which sorts of variations I've "allowed," and which sorts are either too small or too big to matter to me.

Variations that are too small, if I were using stew recipes as my art medium, might be that across six stew recipe variations I only change the number of pearl onions between 8-14. It is just too simple a variation, because in all likelihood, at five gallons of stew it just doesn't matter. Variations that are too big would change the recipe from stew to lasagna, cheesecake, and jello. These are certainly valid recipes, maybe even excellent recipes, but cannot be called "stew" anymore.

The substance of my paper will be describing how I made the instructions and how I chose the range of variations that suit me, and to show that these sorts of sculptures I'm making by hand don't have to happen in a computer.

End of an era: Feet of Clay residency ends August 2014

[This artist's statement is prepared for the artist show on August 22-24, 2014.]

Artist’s Statement (mostly accurate)

It seems impossible that a year has passed while being the Feet of Clay Artist-in-Residence. As a result of the generosity and companionship of the community, I have explored sculptural ideas pertaining to the design of ceramics, refined techniques for teaching ceramics processes to others, and documented much of my progress in photos. This exhibition displays some of the highlights of that productive year.

Overall, my design process involves overabundance and austerity at the same time. In the fertile, decadent sense, planning and designing involves a great deal of imagination and overthinking, which results in objects that are somewhat “overloaded” in the sense that they could be simpler and still be effective. More subtly, the pieces are “overloaded” in the sense in that they operate on many levels for me. In the sparse, restricted sense, often the surfaces and forms have been cleaned smooth of construction details and other evidence that handbuilding took place. As with my searching for a balance between color and form, I’m searching for a balance between overabundance and abstraction.

MOLDMAKING: A large part of my time has been spent developing ways to cast abstract ceramic designs in clay based on unusual plaster pouring techniques. In one method, I join together many flat pieces of aluminum to make close-fitting water-tight spaces. When plaster is poured into those spaces and hardens, the resulting plaster pieces can be separated and used in any combination as the mold for ceramic castings. Because the resulting cast pieces come from the same overall set of plaster sections, the finished objects I’m showing have a nice relationship to them. I can’t make up my mind whether I want the cast forms to be brightly colored or a single neutral color. I’ve shown both.

HANDBUILDING: I have also explored the abstracted geometric forms by handbuilding directly with stiff clay slabs using templates. I’m showing work that uses unglazed clay laminates on the surfaces of slab forms. I’m particularly excited to be using the five claybodies in the studio as an active but somewhat neutral color scheme. The laminates are made by stacking clay pieces together into a loaf and then making slices through the stack at different angles to reveal patterns inside.

DECORATING: As people will have noticed, I do like bright colors as well as neutrals. I spent time developing my sense of color and decoration on smooth, expanded thrown forms. I’m trying to find the right balance of calmness form and activity of decoration.

It has been a deep and abiding pleasure to meet and work among the community members here at Feet of Clay. I look forward to more, and to nourishing all the little projects I have going.

Thank you!

Generative Art Conference 2014

I've been invited to present at the Generative Art Conference in Rome, December 16-19, 2014. Here is the abstract of the paper.

GA2014 – XVII Generative Art Conference
Marc Mancuso	Mind Over Matter: Generative Concepts in Three Dimensional Sculpture (Paper, Artworks)
Topic: (Paper, Artworks)   Authors: Marc Mancuso   www.flickr.com/photos/marcmancuso   Contact: marc_mancuso@ hotmail.com	This paper discusses the effect of generative concepts on the planning, execution, documentation, and interpretation of my recent series of three-dimensional sculptures. My intent was to build systems that had both cyclic and open-ended processes from which there is no combination of fundamental design or surface evidence that traditionally identifies an objectas precursor or final product.   Metal, plaster, rubber, clay, and other commonplace sculptural materials are categorized as points on a set of continuums including rigid-flexible, absorbent-waterproof, opaque-transparent, buoyant-dense, and so on. Based on these intrinsic qualities, I build systems that manage constraints and define and implement rule-sets to regulate the order of interactions. Despite the limited use of virtual technologies, the results of these physical activities can be compared to computational and iterative processes including Boolean operations, graphical user interface tools such as fill and skew, programming structures such as loops, random number generators, and geometric identities.   Additionally, my intent was to allow any transformation to initiate or concludeanother process. Observable “links” to preceding or successive iterations may be perceptible, but traditional notions of completeness or progress towards a particular state are discarded. The physical constraints in these systems inform a discussion of successes and failures encountered during the buildingof processes that respond to these these requirements.   Of particular interest is the way in which plaster, metal, clay, and rubber are used over a series of transformations that demonstrate recursive structures, variations in high- and low-fidelity data compression, and distortion.       (1) flexible form generates unique design from sequence of metal strips  (2) liquid plaster fills all spaces for separable, closely-interlocking pieces (3) liquid clay copies one of many possible spaces among plaster pieces (4) drained, separated clay shell ready for baking, shrinking, and reusing   Documenting ongoing systems that have one or more real-time unfolding aspects and one or more physically durable artifacts raises philosophical issues as well as practical ones. The paper examines the implications of documentation through still images and time-dependent mediums.   The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how the classification systems and transformational rules could inform future work.
	Keywords: sculpture, iteration, algorithm, recursion, materials science, plaster, casting

 

Oh academic paper, where art thou?

This is an abstract written in advance of its paper. My intent is to interest Fancy Art Conference enough that it grants me a spot in its presentations in December. Comments welcome, bloodletting preferred. The length is just about at maximum; if it loses weight, I can fit a pretty picture into the one-page template. Also, since I hate jargon, I did try to keep it away. However, I'm not scared of *dense.* I'm hoping to give up on it toward the end of June and just send it.

Artworks similar to whatever the hell I'm talking about:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcmancuso/sets/72157645276988071/

Abstract version 3t:
This paper discusses the effect of generative concepts on the planning, execution, documentation, and interpretation of my series of recent three-dimensional sculptures. The preparation of metal, plaster, rubber, clay, plastic, and other commonplace materials falls easily within the sculptural traditions of any modestly-equipped studio, and require only a methodical sensibility toward measuring, cutting, fastening, noting elapsed time, and similar operations. Materials are then categorized as instances on a continuum between extremes including rigid-flexible, absorbent-waterproof, opaque-transparent, buoyant-dense, attractive-repulsive, durable-dissolvable, and so on. After the materials are prepared and conceptualized in this way, I build systems that allow me to specify the interaction of materials on an individual or categorical basis, to define and implement rule-sets, to regulate the order of interactions, and to manage constraints. Despite the choice to limit the use of virtual technologies, I show that it is the design and implementation of methodology that places the results of these activities within a generative context. In contrast to other physical systems in which familiar causal interactions and linear methods predominate, my challenge was to build systems that had both cyclic and open-ended processes from which there is no combination of form factor or surface evidence that traditionally identifies an object as precursor or final product. An additional challenge was that the systems should allow any transformation to be the initiating or concluding event of another process. Owing to the physical limitations involved that are not constraints in virtual systems, I discuss my successes and failures toward building systems that fill these requirements. A more concrete analysis discusses the extent to which these particular physical systems have analogs in virtual generative processes. I argue that these systems have close analogs to Boolean operations, graphical user interface tools such as fill and skew, programming structures such as loops, random number generators, and identities of geometry. Of particular interest is the way in which plaster, metal, clay, and rubber are used over a series of transformation to embody recursive structures, variations in high- and low-fidelity data compression, and distortion. A video and several still images illustrate the relationships among those transformations. The paper goes on to point out that documentation raises philosophical issues as well as practical ones. I discuss the implications of documenting systems that have been designed to make starting point and ending points of processes at least ambiguous, if not entirely irrelevant. Since these systems have one or more real-time unfolding aspects, and one or more physically durable artifacts, the documenting gesture provides a means of expression that might range from forensic to cinematic. Additionally I discuss whether concepts of vernacular, idiom, content, medium, and narrative are relevant to discussions of these works. Finally, I discuss my future plans in which I show how these early designs can be interpreted in terms of selection, that essential element in any context for which concepts of user, tool, and result are applicable. Situated in this way, these processes serve as the starting point for projects that are more ambitious in scope and more detailed in structure.

Tags (tentative): analog computing, sculpture, mathematics, hierarchy, programming.

Hi there--
After collecting about 920+ of my drawings, I've begun to sell PDFs of them on etsy for use as coloring books or embroidery patterns.



Check them out!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/152545509



There are lots of other examples http://www.etsy.com/shop/marcmancuso