Strange Attractions: Work-in-Progress, July 2020

Strange Attractions is an ongoing body of work, spanning thirty years, utilizing an original set of strange attractor formulas. Based to the mathematics of chaos theory, I am using chaotic strange attractors to explore natural systems, patterns, and rhythms. Images of these evolving chaotic systems are layered, one moment over next, like waves washing over sand, eventually replacing the accumulation of those that came before. With this work, I make chaos a medium, a material, and a mark-making instrument.

Strange Attractions debuted at the Singapore Night Festival 2019 in the form of live performances and an animation. The project is under active development.

Sparks flying from embers of a fire, pulses of lightning rolling through the clouds of a thunderstorm, and the creaking of a bamboo stand swaying in a rustling breeze...all are examples of the many natural phenomena that fuel my creative practice. With sustained observation, I find myself floating in a meditative state, relaxed but simultaneously actively and mindfully engaged. Strange Attractions is a means to explore similar ephemeral phenomena, to gently abstract their essences, and to create new contemplative experiences. The work evokes many overlapping natural rhythms and time scales, from the saccadic darting of our eyes as we take in the world to the ever-changing rhythms of our breathing, from the breaking of waves to the changing of seasons.

My creative practice has developed into the fundamental way in which I explore the world and put out into the world what I would like to receive back. I create to satisfy my curiosity and sense of wonder. I publicly present the work to invoke that same sense of wonder and to spark curiosity in viewer-participants.

Much of the work is created to have a calming influence in hectic times. Every day, we are assaulted by an epidemic of rapid-cut, harsh, often violent images and sounds in much of contemporary media. Acting against that assault and providing a visual sanctuary in a tightly-wound world, I use the same technologies to gently activate the same visual and perceptual mechanisms that are being assaulted. Engaging both those predisposed to the meditative qualities of the work and those caught off-guard but intrigued by those same qualities, I can turn passive, agitated observers, inundated with a barrage of imagery, into active, mindful participants, enveloped in a process of discovery.

The moving-image visuals of Strange Attractions are produced using real-time computer graphics, continuously evolving, seamlessly and indefinitely. The imagery is a continuum, to be experienced for brief or long periods, providing a unique experience with each engagement — something new to be discovered and, at the same time, never experienced again.

Flying sparks, flashing lighting, and swaying bamboo — all are systems exhibiting characteristics of chaos. In formal chaos theory, chaos is not random. Chaos is characterized by extreme sensitivity to initial conditions — small changes in the initial conditions can lead to dramatically different results, which may appear random. While this sensitivity can give the appearance of randomness, chaos is deterministic. If the initial conditions of a chaotic system can be measured with infinite precision, the results can be predicted, infinitely into the future. That if is of course one of the hugely fascinating aspects of chaotic systems — something that both confounds and is exploited in this body of work.

About these images

In this latest branch of Strange Attractions work, I am creating images for large-scale prints. Harkening back to my earlier work, these images are finely-detailed — a level of detail that rewards nose-up-close scrutiny. Until you/I/we can be together with the prints in the same space, I have included select close-ups of each piece so you can see the detail I see as I create the work. All of the details below represent an approximately 10"-wide portion of the printed work.

Strange Attractions: Behind the images

Visuals are created using custom software that I have developed. These tools have been through many incarnations over the years, with the current, live-performance tool created using C++ and openFrameworks, an open-source toolkit for creative coding. Audio signal processing and physical controller interfacing is facilitated using Cycling ’74’s Max8. Concurrently, I have established workflows in both Python and SideFX’s Houdini. For print works, images are finished (composited and color-graded) using The Foundry’s Nuke.

As always, I welcome any questions, comments, and inquires. To reach out, please see the Contact page.

More to follow…