Shaping Space Riga (2014)

The Shaping Space series consists of unique abstract interactive artworks that are each generating colours and forms in time from a set of unique rules: rules that are rather like their DNA. They also take data from a camera and continuously calculate the amount of activity seen in front of the work. The computer software then steadily modifies the rules. The artwork and its development over time is influenced by the people who look at it. People can readily detect the immediate responses of the work to movement but the changes over time are only apparent when there is more prolonged, although not necessarily continuous, contact with it. The shaping of the form is a never-ending process of computed development. Shaping Space is a representation of computed life, moving and changing of its own accord but maturing and developing as a result of the movement of audiences. Shaping Space interacts gently with its environment. The installation is in a darkened room. There are two changing images in space creating a field of colour. The screens show a living matrix of colours that sometimes change very slowly and at other times burst into life.

Biography

Ernest Edmonds’ art explores colour, time and interaction in the context of colour field painting and systems art. He has exhibited computer-based and systems art around the world since 1970 and showed his first computer-generated video in 1985. He has extended the concept of art as visual research by developing a new approach to art practice that integrates research as a formal activity. He is Professor of Computation and Creative Media at the University of Technology, Sydney and Professor of Computational Art at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transactions in the MIT Press journal, Leonardo. http://www.ernestedmonds.com