“Carnival I-V” by Trevor Batten
Title:
- Carnival I-V
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
Each sub-program produces its own visual transformation of the image similar to the way living creatures transform their environments. Some processes interact directly with the image on the monitor screen or are influenced by the previous data while other processes are completely independent of conditions outside themselves. Playful blocks of colour cut through the image creating a gentle illusion of space while line and circle segments splatter around them creating diffuse clouds of colour. Suddenly a process fragments the image by ‘scrolling’ sections of the image towards or away from the centre, moving identical or different distances so that image fragmentation may increase or destroy any symmetry which may be present. Another set of image processes generate organic and geometric circle based forms mediating between the inorganic and organic aspects by echoing structures and textures formed elsewhere.
Finally, there is the cellular automata which scans a section of the screen, modifies pixel colours according to the pat-tern found and maps the new colours back onto the screen in different positions sometimes self-interacting and sometimes creating sub-symmetries within its main symmetry. Sometimes coloured line or circle segments are drawn instead of pixels so that textural variations are introduced and, because these are not mirrored, distortions of the underlying symmetries. Together the competing elements form a visual world based on games of chance and design, order and chaos, organic and inorganic form, interaction and independence. The slides are selected holiday snapshots taken by the artist as tourist in his own artificially created but functionally independent universe.
