Michael Autumn

Category: Imaging Technology

  • New opportunities for my art with computer programming…

    It’s difficult sometimes to know what to include in an artist’s diary. I keep my diary to the absolute minimum – not only because I simply don’t have the time to jot down everything, but I have a high level of self-censorship. Some things are trivial, however, who knows what legacy I may leave (if any), and what are significant landmarks in an artists’ life that may be of historical and/or biographical interest…?

    This is not a posting about any specific piece of work, I just want to put an entry in the diary of recent achievements that will probably be the beginnings of a fruitful seam of creativity for me – after having recently solved a series of technical challenges (wearing my IT (computer programming) hat) that literally enable some creative ideas that would otherwise not be realisable…

    I’ve long been interested in depicting puzzling, ambiguous, dimorphous ideas in art – and have had many, and a growing number of, ideas mulling around in my head for several years – but with no satisfactory or acceptable way of representing them. So they have been on the backburner – waiting for solutions…

    In parallel to this, for the last few years I’ve been exploring puzzles as a means artistic expression, and this has resulted in me spending hundreds of hours doing vector-based freehand drawings (using a graphics tablet). I have recently been doing some intricate image manipulations and transformations manually (with the creative software I use), and this gave me the idea of using these techniques for the aforementioned other art ideas. However, the problem is (was) that these techniques, if applied to the other ideas, would take prohibitively long. With my IT hat on, I wondered if there might be a way to program some, or all, of these laborious tasks…?

    The great thing about computer programming is that once you solve a problem, it’s a trivial matter to scale it up. For example, if you get a computer program to draw a grid of rectangles – let’s say 5 by 7 – then it’s a trivial matter to get it to do any number of rectangles – e.g. 500 x 700, 5,000,000 x 7,000,000 – or any number you choose. Also, the repeatability of any solved task opens up enormous opportunities – including testing, simulations, daisy-chaining tasks, etc…

    I’ve never mixed proper art with computer programming before. I have designed and developed an art program for others to create digital art, but I’ve never used computer programming to create, or help create, art. However, a few weeks ago I thought it could be a very worthwhile investment of my time to see if I could automate some tasks which would otherwise be too laborious to be conscionable…

    So I looked at the following :-

    • Generate a vector puzzle of any size (these are freely available online)
    • Break a bitmap image into any vector puzzle
    • Make jigsaw puzzle tiles of any colour – particularly random colours from a given palette
    • Break a given percentage of a bitmap image into puzzle pieces. Set these pieces to a given colour or a random selection of colours from a given palette
    • Interleave the puzzle pieces of two (or more) images
    • Allow the masking (in or out) of any of the above
    • Allow the manual manipulation of any of the above – i.e. everything should be manually changeable

    The handful of solutions (the above tasks are very different – and each require a different solution) I have recently come up with collectively give me what I would describe as a new visual grammar with which to express – or depict – a number of visual ideas – including all the ones I have been struggling with prior to this point… Watch this space…

    March 2024

  • Not this year 🙁

    I will not be submitting to this year’s RA Summer Exhibition (2008). No time. Focused on earning a living and iz2u development (link). Sometimes there is as much creativity in trying to provide the economic foundations for the freedom to be artistically creative…

  • A New Way of Seeing?

    Recorded music is ubiquitous and omnipresent: you can play it on a huge and growing number of devices, you can download it from millions of sites on the web, you can amplify it to play it as loud as you like, and you can choose the quality of the reproduction by the device you play it on (although quality of reproduction seems to be getting better all the time and at a more affordable price).Listening to music on the web in no way detracts from the quality of the reproduction or the pleasure you get from listening to it. Musicians and composers will generally not feel misrepresented if you listen to their creations via the web or on various players. There is something extra to be gained by going to a live performance or gig – which has much more to do with atmosphere and ambience – and this will probably always be the case. I would like art and photography to be as ubiquitous, omnipresent, and as accessible as music. Until now, to really appreciate art or photography (or any other two, three, four (video/animations) – dimensional images) you had to go and see them “in the flesh” as it were. This is very unsatisfactory for a number of reasons :-

    • It is severely limited by the number of people who can see the work.
    • It limits the times people can see the work (e.g. only during gallery opening times).
    • Access to close inspection is usually restricted for reasons of security or simply politeness (e.g. not wanted to get the the way of others!).
    • Lighting is generally difficult to control and so work may be viewed in less than idea conditions.
    • Some precious works may actually deteriorate by being exposed to light and uncontrolled atmospheric conditions.

    I set myself the challenge of creating a new web application to display still images on the web in the best possible way and to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible :-

    • It should work on any web browser.
    • The web browser should automatically maximize to fill the whole screen (where the browser permits this).
    • The images should automatically fill the whole browser display area.
    • It should have the option to fill the whole screen – without any browser clutter (e.g. toolbars, menus, scrollbars, status bars, address bars etc.) – so you can see the images as large as physically possible without any other distractions.
    • The image should “intelligently” fill the available space (initially – until you start zooming) in respect to its aspect ratio and the aspect ratio of the web browser or screen – without distortion.
    • There should be no limit on the size of the image – in terms of resolution (MBs/GBs) or physical size (H x W).
    • The image should be displayed at the highest possible quality or resolution for any given viewing scale.
    • There should be optional data about the image – i.e. you should be able to choose whether or not to display this information – easily and quickly. This should have the ability to display hyperlinks and other interactive web content.
    • There should be optional controls and navigation – i.e. you should be able to choose whether or not to display these.
    • To harness the full potential of the virtual gallery.

    I have been working towards this solution for the last 2 years (with a background of 25 years in computer architecture and software design), and, with a really big push in the last few months (and a huge sigh of relief!) – I have finally achieved my goal. The web application/tool is called iz2u™, and all the images you see in my portfolio and blog (Blog) use it. I have also started a new blog devoted to its’ development iz2u and feedback. (Please do not leave feedback about it on this (MA) blog as this is devoted to art and photography). Viewing images on the web with this new technology could actually be better in some respects than seeing them “in the flesh” : –

    • You can spend as long as you like studying the work.
    • You can zoom in to any part of the work (try doing this to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre!).
    • In principle you can supply any amount of supporting multi-media information.
    • You have the convenience of seeing the work any time and from any location.
    • Lighting conditions can be better controlled (art work can be scanned or photographed in perfect conditions, digital images remain in their native format).
    • There is no limit to the size of the images (you are however restricted to looking at them through the window of your computer screen).
    • There is no limit to the number of viewable images.
    • You can gain access to artwork and manuscripts etc. that are too fragile or precious to make accessible to the general public – thereby increasing the number of works available to show.

    There are some obvious drawbacks I can think of :-

    • There is nothing quite like seeing the image/artifact “in the flesh” – even though you may not be able to see it as well.
    • There is no replacement for the social experience and ambience of a gallery – similar to the real experience of going to a live performance or band.
    • The is no replacement for actually being inside a beautiful building and enjoying art in the context of architecture and history.
    • The role of the curator – in terms of juxtaposition, chronology, themes, aesthetics, etc. is missing. Having said that, there is a curatorial role in pure virtual galleries, for example, where the whole virtual space and experience has to be designed…

    Having developed this solution, I can see that there are many uniquely web-technology-based art projects waiting to be born. Watch this space…