This project builds a standard, tertiary ROYGBV color wheel from thousands of images returned by queries for color terms. While the results mostly conform to expectations (e.g. 'orange' predominantly returns images of orange things), there are some important exceptions ('+blue +violet' yields alot of flesh-tone and is most definitely not safe for work). Here, the interest lies in mapping a "semantic gradient" to a color gradient through the amoral & skewed lens of search engines.1
I've started posting some VERY old projects.
Project description:This undergraduate work presents a counter displaying the number of times its button-switch has been pressed.
After a far longer development process than I ever envisioned, we are launching the new and improved salavon.com. There are lots of new features & enhancements and I will post more about these early next week. We still have some dust to sweep up and a few projects are in need of attention, so for now, feel free to poke around and check it out.
Added a new zoom/magnify widget to the project. It's cooler than I thought it would be.
Project description:Each of these prints contains one frame per second of an entire film arranged in a dense grid. This grid is ordered not by the narrative, but by the overall luminosity, as the films are rearranged and represented in their entirety as abstractions.
Every page of the "Field Guide" now online.
Project description:This piece is a fullsize reproduction of the entire 2007 IKEA catalogue, leaving only color and structure. With an estimated 175 million copies distributed in 2006, the IKEA catalogue is thought to have surpassed the Bible as the most published print-work in the world. This group of three projects (374 Farben, Field Guide to Style & Color, and Catalogue) transforms that ubiquity of design into varied pure color arrangements. The Field Guide (Direct Mailer) project was a free giveaway, ed. 1000, of a 36pg booklet version of the Field Guide to Style and Color. Sponsored and distributed by the Columbus Museum of Art.
Added some revealing process images to the project page.
Project description:Common goods arranged in complex radial formations. Inspired by the Buddhist mandala and shopping.
New long form career narrative added to info pages.
Caveat: This was originally written for a grant and may read a little braggy & stilted. Nevertheless, it might be useful to some.
In 1991, as an undergraduate in Austin, Texas, I made a conscious decision to write software to aid in the creation of visual artwork. It’s hard to recall exactly where this notion came from, but the directive was clear: this is where my work should go. It wasn’t a popular choice at the time. This decision directly led me to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, known for a small program in Art & Technology.
During my second year in pursuit of an MFA, to help make ends meet, I took a job as a hybrid artist/programmer at Viacom New Media, the videogame arm of media giant Viacom. For a 25-year-old student with working-class roots, this was a fairly lucrative, upbeat, and seductive environment. The work exposed me to a level of production and professionalism missing in my MFA studies. My academic environment, though, was valuable in stressing some conceptual rigor and articulation of artistic intent. It was the beginning of the dot com technology bubble and, for a time, I considered ...
UChicago cover story added to reviews.
"Data Sets"
University of Chicago Magazine
Mar-Apr 2009
In January of 2008, the Columbus Museum of Art produced a DVD documentary about my work and process. We've posted it here in three parts. Check it out here.
"Portrait" project & detailed notes added to work.
Project description:Likely the final installment of a broader series begun in 1997, each of these pictures employs the bulk of the portrait oeuvres of Franz Hals, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Anthony van Dyck, and Diego Velazquez, respectively. Simple mean-averaging of high-quality reproductions yields these atmospheric meta-portraits.
