Generative Taipei On-Site
Interpretation
This section is divided into two parts, exploring the interpretations between materials and between strokes. The first part features Yi-Wen Lin and Naiting Liu, who present the Miao embroidery collection at the Hong-gah Museum using generative art techniques. The second part involves using a plotter to create works by artist Rev Dan Catt on-site.
Material
Is the imitation of old materials by new media just a kind of nostalgia? In the current blockchain-generated art, many creators use lines and blocks as objects to explore their randomness. However, this concern has long existed in traditional crafts: the “Miao embroidery” in the collection of the Hong-Gah Art Museum, unlike the famous “Xiang embroidery” which focuses on realistic landscapes and figures, mostly expresses abstract works of patterns and rules. In the process of digital coding imitation, we found that the unique material and techniques of Miao embroidery could not be replicated, but the results also produced a “material” exclusive to digital coding. The impossibility of such imitation is where differences and innovations lie.
Miao Embroidery
Miao embroidery is a traditional embroidery craft of the Miao ethnic group in China. It is mainly composed of brightly colored textiles woven from five-color threads, which are often made up of basic geometric shapes and emphasize the beauty of symmetry and fullness. From patterns, colors to space, Miao embroidery is symmetrical and filled with layout. The four pieces exhibited this time are specifically made with orange threads, composed of squares, hexagons, crosses, and delicately crafted with different variations in details.
Artist
Yi-Wen Lin
A creative coder and generative artist, who has been living in Europe for over ten years and has resided in both Paris and London. Influenced by years of living in Western culture and education in Eastern culture, the artist attempts to integrate different cultural elements into their work. Their large-scale interactive pieces have been exhibited at the Barbican Centre in London and the Dubai World Expo. They have also been actively creating generative art for many years, with works featured on internationally renowned platforms such as Art Blocks and fxhash.
Generative Miao Embroidery #14
As soon as I saw the works of Miao embroidery, I was deeply attracted to the squares in them. Almost the entire work is composed of squares of different sizes. In addition, the regular pattern also caught my attention. However, upon closer observation, I found that the patterns in each block were slightly different. These subtle changes make the blocks similar but not repeated. Therefore, in my creation, I focused on these two characteristics and used squares as the main body, alternating with different sizes and colors of squares for combination. In addition, I added small differences in each small block to make the whole picture more interesting and not repetitive.
Artist
Naiting Liu
The production process of this artwork involves observing the logic of the original image (the smallest unit of repeated elements, the arrangement of squares, and the composition of the horizontal bars within the squares), speculating the logic of the embroiderer’s actual handwork (the position of the needle and the direction of the thread), and finally replicating it through coding.
One of the key characteristics of generative art is infinite variation, which stems from randomly set parameters. In this original work, there are many areas that can be treated as parameters, such as color, square size, the proportion of squares being pressed into diamonds, the number of horizontal bars, the direction of the horizontal bars, and the proportion of the horizontal bars to the edge. The variations of these parameters interact with each other to produce a wide range of results.
Generative Miao Embroidery #16
Artist Dan Catt’s “YYYSEED” masterfully integrates digital, print, and pen plotting mediums, offering a distinctive algorithm and SVG support for collectors or viewers to adjust parameters and generate real-time visual outcomes. The artwork not only embodies the artist’s minimalist aesthetics but also allows the creator to observe the realization of the piece from an external perspective.
Stroke
Thanks to blockchain and smart contracts, the difficulty of producing a large number of works by artists has been partially overcome. Moreover, these works are multiple editions that are “the same but different”. If we want to materialize them in physical space, can we only print them out? Is it possible to incorporate an organic stroke and show the process of drawing in real time? Although the plotter is powered by machines and electricity, it can flexibly express lines and even the subtlest brushstrokes. What’s most interesting is that the creator can observe the process of the idea being realized. Returning to the recent anxiety about artificial intelligence, is this human labor saving a replacement or a new direction for mechanical aesthetics? During the stable and quiet operation of the plotter, can “aura” also emerge?
YYYSEED
Artist Dan Catt’s “YYYSEED” masterfully integrates digital, print, and pen plotting mediums, offering a distinctive algorithm and SVG support for collectors or viewers to adjust parameters and generate real-time visual outcomes. The artwork not only embodies the artist’s minimalist aesthetics but also allows the creator to observe the realization of the piece from an external perspective.
