re-frame is a generative artwork that is using the copyright-free, CC0-licensed collection data of the Finnish National Gallery in its implementation. It has been selected into one of the shortlisted artworks of Combine24, a generative art competition organized by the Gallery.
In the artwork, two search queries are used while interacting with the database: landscape and still life. These concepts are historically entangled with artistic practice, where the author aims to interpret different psychological, emotional or other phenomena through the built and the natural environment. Working with collection data, it is not possible to show the physical artworks in their originality, thus re-frame takes an approach of turning computational space into a metaphysical environment by combining a landscape with a still life from different authors into new combinations, resulting in a hybrid, multidimensional area of outdoor, indoor, mental and associative locations.
Monochrome Semantics
The initial visual appearance displays fragments and partial elements of the collage where the referenced image needs to be completed with internal imaginations that might bring forward contemplative awareness and nostalgia. The code selects two images from the database, combine them into one single image, then converts the original colors into fields of monochrome points with varying density levels, where the contours and shapes are not present anymore in their originality, rather should be reconstructed through the act of perception and observation. This static image is then combined with a custom recursive noise function that adds slowly evolving, dynamic animations to the scene. The creation process is finalized using masks of randomly aligned, geometric shapes. The resulting composition resembles collages, different etching or engraving techniques, game engine dithering, malfunctioning computational artefacts, broken lcd crystal fluids and associative, fragmented memory spaces.
Explorative Colors
An important conceptual approach of re-frame is to introduce the different aspects of selected artworks through a process where not everything is visible at once, but the varying features of a piece can be accessed through interacting with composable elements. This approach separates the concept of colors from the semantic representations in the images. Hence, there is another, semi-hidden view of each piece, where an algorithm extracts the six most prominent colors of the collages, and displays them as embedded frames that cover the whole surface. This view is leaving the screen space open for free interpretation with no pre-defined semantics or figurative constraints.
Collection Metadata
The title and short description of each iteration is generated by combining the available metadata of the selected artworks. Where there is no English translation available, re-frame defaults back to the original Finnish expressions, resulting in a hybrid, unconventional language, specific to the dataset.
- Agoston Nagy
- re-fame
- → Permalink [CAN] / Marketplace
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