I came across the Singlecell/Doublecell project after googleing to see if I could find any more information on one of the artists that was involved in the whitneybiennial.com project, Golan Levin. His work for this project entitled Obzok, was one of my favourites. I was attracted to it simply because the little amoeba-cartoon was quirky and cute and the concept behind it is simple and a bit of fun. The work is comprised of an interactive amoeba-like form which sits in the middle of the screen upon a black abyss-like habitat and responds to the movement of the mouse in two ways: 1) by dragging the cursor around the page the participant/viewer will innervate the eyes of the amoeba so they follow the path of the cursor, and 2) by clicking the mouse on the body of the amoeba and dragging the cursor around the page, the amoeba will twist and distort to various degrees, depending on how much you wish to manipulate it.
If you leave the page idle while you work in another programme on your computer, or look at another window, when you go back to Obzok, the amoeba-creature will be sleeping, waiting for you to play with it some more. This gives the impression that the little creature has a life that exists beyond the screen- that while we are away from it, while we are not looking it is asleep waiting for us to re-visit and play some more, like a cyber-pet perhaps?
It was when I was googleing to have a look at some more of Levin's works that I discovered Obzok was also a part of another project 'Singlecell' (2001) /'Doublecell' (2002). http://www.singlecell.org/index.html Let's just say that I had a whole heap of fun with this website! The project is a collection of small-scale works that in their design are in some way associated with the single or double-cell organisms or basic structures. In this respect Levine's work Obzok relates well to the theme of the project.
The homepage www.singlecell.org acts as the portal to both the Singlecell and Doublecell projects. The works are brought up by clicking upon one of the round cell contents. One of my favourites is this work entitled Bob Meets Barbara by Juha Hunskonen http://www.singlecell.org/jh/index.html
According to the website, the Singlecell/Doublecell project was 'an exceptionally clear example... of a wholly new mode of artistic production' with a focus on introducing the concept of "computational design" within the theme mentioned above. 'Computational artists' are explained as those whom are both skilled in programming and the arts and who are interested in exploring a cross-over of these fields. Doublecell/Singlecell seeks to engage these artist/programmers/web designers, such as Levin and give them a platform to explore their artistic interests without having to work within the parametres of commercial design. Specifically, the project is interested in those 'computational artists' who write their own software. [http://www.singlecell.org/about.html]
This project interested me because it reminded me of the discussion we had in class about Deleuze's theory of territorialisation and the establishment of ecological niches. The works the artists have produced in Singlecell and Doublecell visually relate to the structure of cells or simple primordial forms and thematically are based upon new beginnings, growth and potential and in doing so are a visual metaphor for the projects goal 'to gather together and create a community for a new species of designer.' [http://www.singlecell.org/about.html] Here, programmers who are interested in exploring the artistic potential inherent in the software they use are given the task to explore the territory between art and programming, and in doing so create a new form of and forum for artistic expressivity and personal expressivity.
1 comment:
I love the comeback Biology and the various other sciences have made in popular and mass consciousness in recent years. Indeed, fields as obscure as entomology are the inspiration for a new generation of computing processes called 'swarm' intelligence and evolutionary programming.
The encounter between Biology and Art gives rise to many questions, most interesting to me is this:
If human artistic expressivity is itself a subset of a greater biological expressivity, and one could perhaps make the claim that nothing as yet has surpassed the evolutionary process itself in terms of novelty and originality of creation, how are we to 'judge' the various objects of human expressivity as art distinct from the other products of a world? Does it really rest after all on the rather simple rationale that art is simply whatever is called art by particular individuals and communities?
"Howard Morphy (1994) in a recent discussion of the problem of the definition of art in the anthropological context, considers, and rejects, the (Western) institutional definition of art, that 'art' is whatever is treated as art by members of the institutionally recognized art world - critics, dealers, collectors, theoreticians, etc." (Alfred Gell, 1998, p. 5).
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