17 févr. 2012

Jeffrey Thompson 10 000 pixels

Jeffrey Thompson est sans doute à l’art ce que Einstein fut à la science en son temps : un surdoué parti loin, très loin, mais qui au final a sans doute devancé son époque.

2011: Sound installation, custom software

Artiste, musicien, professeur, chercheur, mathématicien, passionné d’informatique et de ses langages divers, Jeffrey fait dans l’art algorithmique, pixellisé et hyper conceptuel. En ce moment en résidence au Holland Computing Center (le centre ultra pointu en informatique de l’université du Nébraska) il s’associe avec Angeles Cossio (www.angelescossio.com pour monter la galerie Drift Station (www.driftstation.org).

Un artiste qui mélange maths, informatique, et pixel art ; à l’heure du tout numérique ; forcément, ça vous titille un tantinet la fibre intello-geek…

What did you do before the birth of the Internet?
Being 10, I was obsessed with drawing comics and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We had a lab of Apple computers and I played a lot of Oregon Trail and Number Munchers games in school; I think that aesthetic has carried through in ways that aren't always conscious.  

What is your opinion about numeric art?
There's a lot of work to be done to legitimize online platforms. One way might be to use what the web and the database structures behind it are good at: customized and real-time experiences.  Sorting artworks algorithmically the way Pandora does and other means of organization that aren't digital copies of traditional formats.

Geometrics and colors: chaos, order, or beauty?
I think 20th-century science and mathematics have shown us that chaos, order, and beauty are really the same thing.  Rule-based structures and the patterns that result from them are really inspiring, especially ones that are deceptively simple.

What is your dreaming piece of art?
A likely impossible idea to "use up" my digital camera by creating algorithmically every possible image it can create, one at a time using software. The images would include every possible photograph of me, of you, of every variation of my face and yours, of my childhood, of the future. A low-resolution image at 320x240 pixels in grayscale has 256^76800 possible images! Even using fantastically-powerful computers I don't think this will be possible.

What's next for you?
I'm working on a public art commission that will be fabricated this spring, which I'm really excited about.  I'm also getting ready to dive into an algorithmic book project that interpolates texts based on a set of linguistic rules.  I just launched an online project called "What I See When My Eyes Are Closed" that crowd-sources data about the color people see when their eyes are closed.  Everyone should take a look and send me your color!

En ce moment, Jeffrey Thompson expose ses "10000 Pixels" online sur le site Art Micro Patronage  (artmicropatronage.org).











Jeffrey Thompson is surely to art what Einstein was to science in his time: a person whose gifts have taken him far out, very far, but who in the end will definitely push his era forward. Artist, musician, professor, researcher, mathematician, passionate about technology and its many languages, Jeffrey makes algorithmic, pixellated and ultraconceptual art. Currently in residence at the Holland Computing Centre (the cutting edge computer technology centre at the University of Nebraska), he’s joined forces with Angeles Cossio (www.angelescossio.com) to open the Drift Station gallery (www.driftstation.org).

What did you do before the birth of the Internet?
Being 10, I was obsessed with drawing comics and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We had a lab of Apple computers and I played a lot of Oregon Trail and Number Munchers games in school; I think that aesthetic has carried through in ways that aren't always conscious.  

What is your opinion about numeric art?
There's a lot of work to be done to legitimize online platforms. One way might be to use what the web and the database structures behind it are good at: customized and real-time experiences.  Sorting artworks algorithmically the way Pandora does and other means of organization that aren't digital copies of traditional formats.

Geometrics and colors: chaos, order, or beauty?
I think 20th-century science and mathematics have shown us that chaos, order, and beauty are really the same thing.  Rule-based structures and the patterns that result from them are really inspiring, especially ones that are deceptively simple.

What is your dreaming piece of art?
A likely impossible idea to "use up" my digital camera by creating algorithmically every possible image it can create, one at a time using software. The images would include every possible photograph of me, of you, of every variation of my face and yours, of my childhood, of the future. A low-resolution image at 320x240 pixels in grayscale has 256^76800 possible images! Even using fantastically-powerful computers I don't think this will be possible.

What's next for you?
I'm working on a public art commission that will be fabricated this spring, which I'm really excited about.  I'm also getting ready to dive into an algorithmic book project that interpolates texts based on a set of linguistic rules.  I just launched an online project called "What I See When My Eyes Are Closed" that crowd-sources data about the color people see when their eyes are closed.  Everyone should take a look and send me your color!

All Credits © Jeffrey Thompson

Aucun commentaire: