Kinetic Drawing Number 7 (second iteration), 2009.

Kinetic Drawing Number 7 (first iteration), 2009.

Kinetic Drawing Number 7 comes out of the process of building a databank of 8 micro-animations ranging from 5 to 40 frames (1 second of video is roughly 30 frames per second) that are based on a digitally processed pen and ink drawing from one of my sketchbooks. Working with a musical scale (F# major), I used an 8 octave system and generated a triangle wave tuned to the frequency of each note in each octave in the animation software used to create the work. The colors I worked with were the primary colors of light and reflective color -- red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black -- seven colors representing seven notes in a musical scale. I created a layer of animation for each octave that was comprised of one of the micro-animations in each color, starting with the lowest notes assigned to the shortest of the micro-animations so that they would produce an underlying beat in the piece. To determine how and when a section would appear or overlap another in the layer, I used a chance operation, rolling dice, to add a sense of randomness and to eliminate any particular bias for a color, or arrangement of sounds. The first roll would determine which section out of seven would be used, the second roll determined the number of dice I would need to decide how many iterations of that section there would be, the third roll was for how many dice I would need to roll to determine the amount of overlap or amount space between each section, and the fourth roll was for the number of times those dice would be rolled. A fifth roll determined whether the next group would overlap the former or vice versa. When each section was completed, I would roll dice to determine how long the next layer would be. When the final composite was generated, I had eight pieces of animation ranging in length between 2:30 min to 10 min, so over the course of the piece, sections are repeated and re-contextualized.

The driving concept behind this work is part technical exploration of a single drawn image processed and presented over time with a larger consideration of a mark in digital space and part aesthetic, phenomenological inquiry that questions fundamental aspects of how we experience the world. I attempt to do so with a minimal amount direct authorship to determine a final product outside of the development and implementation of a somewhat austere system intended to generate a sense of randomness and touching on an idea of nature in the machine. I think a lot about how we experience the world and consider the idea of a rift between the physical, tactile experience of our senses and our drive toward analytical reflexivity. When we think we are experiencing a thing or moment we are really experiencing our thoughts about that with which we are engaged and are therefore not truly engaged at all. My hope is that through the various elements in this piece -- flickering, color, sound, continuous movement and introduction of elements -- that the viewer's analytical perception is broken down and they are able to experience the work in the present moment.

Kinetic Drawing Number 6, 2009.

Kinetic Drawing Number 6 (2009, 4 min) is the sixth in a series of works that explore the digital image over time as a drawing or painting in motion. The piece is based on a pen and ink drawing digitally altered and processed into the animated work you see here. Much of the what inspires the work is an interest in the ideas behind works such in color field painting, experimental film (and video) works from the late 1950's and 60's, Serialist compositional strategies, and chance operations utilized by artists and composers throughout the early to mid 20th century. The work explores the line between the physical act of seeing and the proclivity of the intellect to interfere with that experience — that our analysis or thoughts of what we are seeing actually usurps the act of seeing itself. It is therefore the idea and not the "thing itself" that we see. The goal is to envelope the viewer in the experience of viewing, where they momentarily are drawn out of themselves and into the experience of the work itself.

The piece was produced by combing two animations, each using notes from a single chord (A minor 7 and C7#11 respectively), and representing each octave using three colors in video — red, green and blue for each octave. The number of iterations for each note was dictated by chance operations by literally rolling dice in order to create a sense of randomness in an attempt at mimicking nature.

Kinetic Drawing Number 5, 2009.