A slide outlining Casey Reas’ presentation.
The last day of the festival was the longest excluding the after-after party. It started with data, the kind you can eat, then the day moved through a run of presentations dealing with everything from Coding Narratives to interactive performance to Zimoun’s installation art.
I also managed to record a few interviews. The videos can be seen at: http://www.latuscreativity.it/
Given the array of talents at Memo Atken‘s disposal, it is possible to imagine any number influences which may have impacted him throughout his life, that is why it is perfectly logical that a cartoon like Tom & Jerry embodies, in one sense, the reason why he became a visual artist. No, it is not so much for the visuals or the qualities of the characterizations, but something more nostalgic and reminiscent of film before the talkies; That is, sound as a textured and driving force for a visual language. Though he did not have enough time show the selection of works he had intended, it was clear enough to see that he was more fond of the visual work which had a tight correlation to sonic events.
Casey Reas‘ presentation in the afternoon was like a rapid retrospective of his work in a lecture he labeled, the studio as software. He began the lecture by showing the paintings made by one of his friends. He mentions the ways in which they are similar, but, he says, the difference is that “… I have never used a brush.” It seems prudent to remind us that we are looking at a painter whose canvas includes the dimension of time and whose material is code. He is a programmer, certainly. But, one may judge, with over a decade of teaching designers how to program, and the way in which he has devised the Processing curriculum, that programming is not [at all] an end, but a universal means. I like his work for several reasons, one is that it somehow reminds of Al Held‘s paintings, but mostly because it is organic; a perfect example of how we strive to fashion the digital into analog, or perhaps just something more familiar in look and behavior. We can measure technological progress in any number of ways, but its ultimate success is determined by whether or not we are convinced enough, to integrate it further into our existence.
Moritz Stefaner explains how the preparation of food was determined by data.
Memo talking about the Saatchi&Saatchi project…lots of quadcopters.
