Cellular Forms at the V&A

A few days ago I got some fantastic news from the V&A, the world's largest museum of art and design: they want to add almost all of the work from my recent exhibition at Watermans to their digital art collection. This will include large format prints and video works covering all three phases of my recent Cellular Forms, as well as the stereoscopic version of Hybrid Forms that formed the centrepiece of the exhibition.

I am particularly pleased that the V&A want to add the works as a connected whole rather than just a few selected pieces. It's very much an honour to be added to their digital art collection since it is considered the main national collection in the UK, includes work stretching back to the 1960s, and has a strong focus on digitally created art that uses algorithmic processes.

Many thanks to Irini Papadimitriou for curating the exhibition at Watermans, and to Douglas Dodds and Melanie Lenz at the V&A for being so supportive and putting forward the proposal to the acquisitions committee.

Species Explorer

I've recently begun to give public presentations about Species Explorer, the software I've developed to enable me to creatively work with parametrically driven systems such as Cellular Forms. Species Explorer has been a critical part of all my recent work, allowing me to work with simulation systems that often have 30 or more parameters while still exploring the space of possibilities and guiding the results in directions that appear to be creatively interesting. The software combines machine learning and evolutionary search techniques in a manner that I think is both theoretically interesting and practical.

In the last few months I have presented a paper about Species Explorer at the annual Electronic Visualization and the Arts conference in London as well as giving a talk about it at Digi Pro 2016 just before SIGGRAPH in Ananheim CA. The work seems to have provoked quite a lot of interest, and I'm planning to do more research and development to take the system further forward and extend how it could be used in a variety of ways.

Recently a group of student at UCL's The Bartlett School of Architecture have been using Species Explorer for a project, connecting it to their own simulation engine. You can see some of the results at this year's B-Pro Show (see below).

On Monday 10th October I will be appearing at the annual Bournemouth Visual Effects, Animation and Games Festival. As well as taking part in panel sessions about visual effects pipelines and rendering I will be giving a presentation called 'Cellular Forms: adventures in morphogenesis and high dimensional parameter spaces' that will cover Species Explorer as well as my art practice.

Bartlett B-Pro 2016 Show

As many of you know, I have been working for the last year as a visiting lecturer at UCL's The Bartlett School of Architecture, working with students on their post-professional MArch in Architectural Design. The group I have been working with is focused on combining computational generation of design with robotic fabrication.

Given that I have a background in film and animation rather than architecture I feel very lucky to have been invited to be part of such a fascinating environment. The MArch AD is part of the B-Pro group that aims to explore new emerging professional practice. I am very pleased that the first group of students I have been working with have now completed their studies. The B-Pro 2016 Show, including their work, will be be opening on Tuesday 27th September at 6:30pm and running until Sunday 2nd October. If you are interested in seeing lots of thought provoking ideas in experimental architecture and design, please come along.

Work with Max Cooper

I'm continuing to work with Max Cooper, the musician that I've been collaborating with for a few years now. As well as creating really interesting music that combines electronica and techno with forms such as jazz singing and piano, Max has a PhD in genetics, which has meant a lot of interesting common ground with my art work.

Max's second album, Emergence, is coming out in November and will feature artwork from my Aggregation series both on the cover and inside the album. I have also been working together with Max on an experimental art-science project based on data from The Babraham Institute near Cambridge. It's too early to share the results, but it's proving interesting working with genuine scientific research data. The project has also been a great opportunity to get a deeper understanding of Unreal Engine, a set of tools usually used to create high end computer games, and I'm now exploring the potential to extend my work into Virtual Reality.

Borough of Ealing Art Trail

Closer to home, I've just taken part in the first Borough of Ealing Art Trail, better known as BEAT. This was quite a new experience for me, and I really appreciated the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who aren't already deeply involved with digital or science based art. As well as selling a number of prints I received positive enthusiastic feedback from everyone I talked to. I'd very much like to thank all the organizers for their hard work, and hope to take part again next year.