Thin as Thorns, In These Thoughts in Us:
An Exhibition of Creative AI and Generative Art
Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles
September 8 to December 1, 2020 (by appointment only until further notice: 310.837.0191)
Honor Fraser Gallery, 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los, Angeles, California 90034
Work by Roman Verostko, invited for this exhibition, features the Gaia Triptych shown here in both its open and its closed position. Also are four examples from his limited edition of Chapter 3 from George Boole's important work on the derivation of the laws of human thought. Pen & brush plotted frontispieces and end-pieces are shown below.
Gaia Triptych III, 1991, pen, ink, and brush plotter drawing with hand-applied gold leaf, 41 x 38 1/4 in. (closed); 41 x 79 in. (open). Collection of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Photo: Rik Sferra.
This triptych, structured, like a folding altarpiece, may be viewed in either the open or closed position. Such folding panels were used in the middle ages and the renaissance for liturgical purposes.
For the five panels comprising this work well over 50 thousand starting coordinates and over half a million control coordinates were plotted to within one thousandth of an inch. Brush strokes, pen strokes and clusters of pen strokes were realized with coded improvisations based on one initiating set of coordinates. All the work, including pen color decisions, was software generated except the gold leaf which was applied by hand.
This work enshrines the procedure by which it was made. The brush strokes celebrate the key to its form-growing "recursive loops", processes that bear some similarity to those present in the formation of crystals and in biological growth. As a visual presentation of such procedures the triptych provides a window on unseen processes shaping mind and matter. By doing so it becomes an icon illuminating the mysterious nature of Earth and Cosmos.
My master code, Hodos, is an intelligent code capable of generating art forms that embody concepts underlying my art work reaching back to the 1950's, about 25 years before I wrote my first lines of code in Fortran. The same parent code generated all pen and brush strokes present in all 5 panels.
