Flicker 2010

Generative software program, computer, monitor. Duration 2:20 minutes. Developed in collaboration with Oliver Brown.

Artist’s Synopsis

I work across the disciplines of art and science. I am interested in developing new modes of creative expression through computation, expression that, in the spirit of Gyorgy Kepes, leads to a “deeper and richer sense of life.” My work examines the spaces between the natural and the artificial through the lens of neo-Darwinian evolution. I try to create spaces and environments that elicit new ways of understanding nature and the complexities of our relationship with it. I am inspired by the methodologies of artificial life: an endeavour that aims to synthesise like-like patterns and systems in non-biological media, such as computation. I am interested in how we devise and appreciate these contemporary electronic “after natures” as substitutes and replacements for what was once thought of as an infinite abundance.

In these works I have developed software simulations based on metaphors and processes from biological ecosystems. As the simulations unfold, higher level behaviours and responses emerge through, simpler, lower level interactions. It is difficult to predict what these behaviours will be, but they are often surprising, delightful or disturbing. Each iteration is different, and the combinations seemingly endless, leading to sense of the computational sublime.

Artist’s Biography

Jon McCormack is a Melbourne-based electronic media artist and academic. Since the late 1908s McCormack has worked with computer code as a medium for artistic expression. Inspired by the complexity and wonder of a diminishing natural world, his work is concerned with electronic ‘after natures’ – alternate forms of artificial life that may one day replace the biological nature lost through human progress and development.

His artworks have been widely exhibited at leading international galleries, museums and symposia, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Tate Gallery (Liverpool, UK) ACM SIGGRAPH (USA), Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), Images du Futur (Canada), New Voices, New Visions (USA) Alias/Wavefront (USA),The John Lansdown Award for Interactive Media (UK), and Nagoya Biennial (Japan).

The monograph, Impossible Nature: the art of Jon McCormack, was published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2005 to widespread acclaim. The book documents McCormack’s creative achievements over the last 15 years and reflects on the philosophical and creative ideas behind his unique work.

McCormack is Associate Professor, ARC Research Fellow, and Director of the Centre for Electronic Media Art, Monash University, Melbourne. He also holds a Research Fellow position at Goldsmiths, University of London, the UK’s leading creative university and was recently artist-in-residence at the Ars Electronica Future Lab in Linz, Austria.

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