'The Algorithmic Art of Scott Draves': dreams of Electri
Source: Mary Thomas
A still from "Generation 243," a computer art piece derived from Scott Draves' Electric Sheep project, which is installed in Carnegie Mellon's Gates and Hillman centers
Scott Draves, a Google maps engineer with a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, created in 1999 the Electric Sheep, a cyborg mind consisting of tens of thousands of computers and of people from across the Internet.
The software artist will give a free public lecture and exhibition of two of his works at 4 p.m. Monday in room 6115 of the CMU School of Computer Science, 4902 Forbes Ave.
The talk, "The Algorithmic Art of Scott Draves," will be preceded by refreshments at 3:30 p.m. and followed at 5 p.m. by a tour of the Gates Center where Mr. Draves' artwork, "Generation 243," is on permanent display on the fifth floor. A new work purchased by the school, "Generation 244," will be dedicated.
Mr. Draves made the two works with the Electric Sheep, a software system that falls within the technical sphere of artificial life. The terminology he uses to describe its functions parallels that of biological systems and evolution in particular.
The colorful abstract artwork begins with unique algorithmically generated genetic codes written by Mr. Draves that he makes available free, in open source fashion, to anyone who would like to modify or otherwise engage with them. The designs morph through hundreds of thousands of iterations, each image the solution to an equation with thousands of parameters and millions of variables.
The approximately 50 designs chosen for "Generations 243" took about 200,000 computer hours to render and are distilled from 2 terabytes (2,048 gigabytes) of data. The designs combine seamlessly and play in ever-changing, nonrepeating order. Various segments have been described as made of rose, silver and gold with a shimmering, ethereal quality; a glowing sun in the night sky, pierced with bright strands of spiraling lightning bolts; and autumn-colored mosaic tile melting on the floor of a mosque, followed by a pattern reminiscent of a raindrop spreading on the greenish surface of a deep, still pool.
Mr. Draves' work is included in a permanent Museum of Modern Art Web exhibit, "Design and the Elastic Mind," and may be seen here. He is among three artists featured in a PBS video (see "Generative Art"). His work has been featured in magazines such as Wired and Discover, and he has exhibited in numerous global electronic arts festivals and competitions.
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