Morphogenetic Creations at Watermans

I’m very happy to announce my first major exhibition in London, which will be taking place at the Watermans Centre from 13th June to 21st July. The Watermans Centre has a long history of promoting new media art, and I’m very honoured to have been invited to stage a solo exhibition in their main gallery space.

The exhibition will focus on three different phases of my work exploring morphogenesis: the original Cellular Forms, the Plant Forms and the most recent Hybrid Forms. Within each phase I will be exploring different ways of viewing the work, and how each representation reveals different aspects of the original data that comes from the simulations.

The Computer Arts Society will be holding an event on Wednesday 15th June to launch the exhibition. The event will start with a talk by Matthew Jarron, from the University of Dundee. This will be about Scottish mathematician and zoologist D'Arcy Thompson, whose book ‘On Growth and Form’ has been hugely influential on my work. That will be followed by drinks, the private view and a tour of the exhibition.

The event is free, but you will need to book tickets. Here's the booking page:

https://www.watermans.org.uk/events/building-the-bridge-between-science-art-darcy-thompson-and-on-growth-form/

If you’re in London it would be really great to see you there. It should be an interesting exhibition incorporating a number of new ways of presenting work that I've been actively experimenting with. These include 3D printing, a holographic computer display, and an installation that uses projections together with a custom built stereo viewer to show my recent Hybrid Forms in a new way.

London LASER

I have also been invited to give a presentation about my work on Tuesday 21st June at London LASER (the Leonardo Art and Science Evening Rendezvous). These monthly events are a forum for exploring the boundary between art and science, with a number of guest speakers at each event.

This will take place at the University of Westminster. You can book tickets here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/london-laser-16-tickets-25633374112

EVA London and DigiPro

At the beginning of July I will be presenting a paper at the EVA London 2016 (Electronic Visualization and the Arts) conference about Species Explorer, the software I use to select the forms in all my recent work.

I’ve been developing Species Explorer for a number of years now, the aim being to use the computer to actively assist exploring the space of possibilities when there are too many parameters to explicitly try all combinations. The system uses a hybrid combination of evolutionary techniques and machine learning in what I believe is an interesting, novel way.

Later in July I will be giving another talk about Species Explorer, but this time at DigiPro 2016 in Anaheim CA, USA. This is a co-hosted symposium that runs each year just before SIGGRAPH, with a focus on visual effects and animation. I was invited by the conference chairs to submit a proposal for a presentation, and it should be a very interesting forum to discuss the techniques that I have been using, and the potential for applying them to a wider range of applications.