Inspired by still image, 8-Bit Max still art, Siggraph Sparks

Still images

I am releasing a series of ‘8 Bit Max‘ images expanded from my original generative algorhythmic images. See below for Siggraph Sparks online 3 Dec 2021 9pm GMT about still images.

Animated  GIF art is a hybrid type, usually a still image with a small amount of animation, often limited to small areas, and one change like a flip.

Here’s an experimental image I made earlier from one of the MA1 stills. They master image is hi res so can be zoomed.

MA1 Still image 8-bit Max
MA1 Still image 8-bit Max Geoff Davis 2021

Zoom in

MA1 Still image 8-bit Max
MA1 Still image 8-bit Max

Sparks – 3 Dec 2021

There is a new Siggraph Sparks session (online) ‘Within the Frame: Continuum of the Still Image’ moderated by Dena Eber and Sue Gollifer (December 3, 2021, 4PM EST/9PM GMT).

Visit: Siggraph Sparks

Info:

This 10th SPARKS session welcomes the presentation of artworks and projects that represent the continuum of image making and that reveal the essential ways that digital tools have moved it forward.  Thus, we are looking for artists, theorists, researchers and practitioners of any image making practice to present and talk about works that range from fully digital, to a hybrid of digital and traditional practice that illustrate the growth of image making since the onset of widely available digital tools.  The work or aesthetics may be about the medium or they might simply tell a story or illustrate concepts.

We are interested in a range of approaches including those from the past and those from the bleeding edge, using out of the box or homespun tools.  Still images of any kind are welcome as our ultimate goal is to not only establish how digital methods are essential to image making, but also to highlight and perhaps remind us that the single image is still powerful and still important now, more than ever.

Talk

Geoff Davis talking about Micro Arts, his 1980s computer art group

Computer Arts Society, 9/6/2020

Video to be posted here soon.

geoffdavis5  gmail  com

or use Contact on the this site.

Micro Arts – produced a range of computer art for popular micros, and a paper magazine. Programmed, curated by Geoff, with contributions from friends, male, female, UK, US, France.

Aim was to start a new computer arts group, educate and perhaps sell a few art data cassettes. Later it all went onto Prestel national teletext.

Modelled on art groups London Video Arts and London Film-Makers Co-op; and indie record labels. This was my social background at the time.

Was intended to be a community, inclusive, diverse, populist, grass roots political. No ‘authority’. Not academic, I left University in 1980 and wasn’t thinking of it. No CAS at the time.

Was well reviewed by mainstream computer press, see Reviews.

No internet so hard to market.

Many outputs:

  • algorithmic art and animations, MA1 by Geoff Davis and MA3 by Martin Rootes)
  • conceptual (long form 2 years, math/code art, Dada word generator etc.), MA2 by Geoff Davis
  • graphic feminist/political animations, Money Work System from SCUM Manifesto, MA2
  • text generation from a story about the 1980s epidemic of prion mad cow disease BSE, MA4 by Geoff Davis (exhibited at LFMC show, and later distributed on Prestel teletext).

I had a few stories published, this is one of my competing activities. See my section in People.

The print Magazine was free. Full of informative articles, not reviews. (Magazine is on this site.)

Prestel was on invitation from EMAP but that took some of the momentum out of it, then I started working commercially again.  See Prestel page.

Also got involved in so-called ‘pirate TV’ NetWork 21. (No pirates, but lots of art, fashion.)

For more from the various contributors see People page.

CAS was not around at this point. Only contact I had was Harold Cohen (art machines) by letter in US,  who was famously uninterested in ‘computer art’ as a scene. He told me all art was about marketing. He was in academia, which operates as a huge marketing funnel (as well as providing work for artists).

Personal history

Before Micro Arts I was working in commercial COBOL programming (using pencils) on a Univac 1100 mainframe, and also Vax minis.

After Micro Arts, networking (at Prudential, first use of networked ‘personal computers’ IBM PC ATs in dealing room, no-one there had experience of micros, it was large IBM mainframe site).

Later, worked in new computer graphics lab at Sheffield Hallam University, Psalter Lane art college (12 x Unix Apollo workstations,  2D and 3D modelling and animation, CGAL (Peter Comninos) etc.).

Later still, London Institute teaching, then web industry, apps.

Now computers and text researcher at UAL CCI, Camberwell art college. Still in early stages.

1980s

Huge change in tech from 1980 (mainframes, coding with pencils) to 1990 (workstations). Micros appeared and improved over decade.

Warhol used Amiga, etc. – computers becoming unavoidable in art, design, music, film, smaller businesses.

Early artists moved into commercial work.

What is use now?

Archive, historical.

Educational examples – what can be done with relatively simple computers – hands on – Raspberry Pi

Artworks and merchandise on sale here soon  – archival prints, reprint of Magazine, MA1, MA2, MA3, MA4 Data Cassettes, Magazine 2, previously unpublished.

 

 

Video of computer generated art MA1:1 Abstract Originals 1984

Another video this time of MA1 ‘Abstract Originals’:1

The first generated art on MA1 Geoff Davis ‘Abstract Originals’.

No sound.