Emergence in Paint by Kyle Clements (2005)

Emergence in Paint: 2005



In 2005, I was reading a lot about emergence, or self-organizing systems, where you start at the bottom with a set of very simple rules, which, after running their course, lead up to something big and interesting.

I was eager to bring this approach to my painting, so I wrote up some very simple rules, grabbed a canvas, and got to it.




The canvas was divided into a grid with 25 squares.

I put down some paint, then picked a square, and looked at the 4 squares immediately adjacent to it.

Were they darker, or lighter than the square I had selected? If the surrounding squares were darker, I would add a dark blue glaze, if they were lighter, a light yellow glaze, and if it was a tie, a red glaze. This had the potential to run forever, so with each turn, I would paint one less square than I did in the previous turn. Each step would be photographed.

I wasn't so much interested in the rules playing out perfectly, I wanted to work some human imperfection into the system, so I judged the lightness/darkness of the squares by eye.



The end result wasn't as interesting as I has hoped, so I didn't bother to continue with this series. Since this piece is very much about the process used to make it, rather the final object, I thought this video would be a better way to present this project than a gallery wall would have been.



Kyle Clements
Art:
(c) 2005

Video:
2010, cc-by-nc-sa

http://www.kyleclements.com

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Tags:

• kyle clements
• art
• paint
• acrylic
• emergence
• 2005
• toronto
• canada

[cathyclements2000]

Great work Kyle! You are my favourite artist.

[tayo3o]

Lovely, I like your painting.

It relieves me from the hyper realism stress I get from AP Studio Drawing craze. @_@