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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Moments of TURBULENCE
Jon McCormack
Original: PR_1995_mccormack2_001_o.jpg | 462 * 206px | 169.2 KB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 4429 * 3024px | 42.6 MB
Original: Moments of TURBULENCE | 1279 * 2065px | 7.6 MB
What would life look like if it were made from computer algorithms rather than flesh and blood? "Moments of TURBULENCE" is a menagerie of computer synthesised forms and ecologies, based on the new science and philosophies of "Artifical Life" - the digital formation of life-like forms and processes from materials other than those found in nature.
To create the work, artifical organisms were evolved within the computer using a parody of the process of natural selection, implemented in software written by the artist. But rather than survival of the fittest - Darwin's "life-as-we-know-it", within the machine it is survival of the most aesthetic - "life-as-it-could-be". In many ways "Moments of TURBULENCE" is a type of futuristic natural history film, made visible through the synergetic combination of mind and machine - a document of a type of life that exists only within the abstract pluriverse of computational space. A place that never was in a time that has never been.
Technical Bacckground
HW: SGI
SW: Artist's Proprietary
To create the work, artifical organisms were evolved within the computer using a parody of the process of natural selection, implemented in software written by the artist. But rather than survival of the fittest - Darwin's "life-as-we-know-it", within the machine it is survival of the most aesthetic - "life-as-it-could-be". In many ways "Moments of TURBULENCE" is a type of futuristic natural history film, made visible through the synergetic combination of mind and machine - a document of a type of life that exists only within the abstract pluriverse of computational space. A place that never was in a time that has never been.
Technical Bacckground
HW: SGI
SW: Artist's Proprietary
Jon McCormack (AUS) studied animation at the Swinburne Film & Television School (Melbourne, Australia). He has developed artist's computer software. His work examines and interprets nature and natural systems through computer algorithms. Currently a lecturer in Computer Science at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.