ISEA 2011 Istanbul

ISEA Istanbul 2011, 14 - 21 September, 2011

• Over 100 international artists from all over the world at the intersection of art, science and technology.
• More than 450 presentations, over 70 panels, plus 60 workshops as well as networking meetings and special events.
• From algorithmic art to robotic, from musical plants to art with bacteria.
• ISEA 2011 Istanbul coincides with the Istanbul Biennale, Isimsiz (12. Istanbul Bienali), 2011
• As well as several art gallery exhibitions throughout Istanbul.

Keynote Speaker: Roman Verostko

"The Painter's Brush: Hand-held and Machine Held 1947 - 2011"*

Verostko's major influences include the following: Kandinsky for his visual forms analogous to music trying to transcend material object and reality. Mondrian's 3 dimensional aspect depicted on a 2D surface. Naum Gabo's kineic standing waves as a new reality which could stand on it's own and in and of itself. Piet Mondrian's dynamic equilibrium, equivalent oppositions, universal harmony and cosmic order.

The Magic Hand of Chance is "the art idea guiding the hand moving to the art idea guiding machine," thereby moving from hand painting to pen plotter drawing machine, algorithmically derived, with code set in parameters, in a sense algorithmic poetry.

"synography like a symphony"

As such code underlies much of our culture. The question is, how do you get from the composer a translation from idea to expression? Code contains something (spiritual), it transcends yet is evasive, something we can't logically explain. There is code for everything and in everything; for example our DNA is code. The process or procedure of where you go with it. During the Renaissance there was a shift in human consciousness a revelation in terms of how humans looked at and experienced the world.

In the Information Age we apply a generative procedure with computer power we can do things we couldn't do before. What influences those decisions is arbitrary, not less than, not more than, but a throw of the die. Epigenetic art is not purely generative art, yet if genotype is the code then the process by which the code unfolds. When the seed is planted it grows into a tree, epigenisis, the mature tree is the genotype. Epigenetic is the process that leads to a painting system generated from gestures.

*Notes from the lecture.