Internationally renowned digital artist Alex May will discuss “Algorithmic Photography”, a technique he created and pioneered.
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Synopsis
Internationally renowned digital artist Alex May will discuss “Algorithmic Photography”, a technique he created and pioneered to capture data and reveal hidden or unnoticed information in his own moving image artworks using bespoke computer vision algorithms that he has coded in C++.
Through a multistage process encompassing video capture, motion detection, and colour space conversion, his abstracted compound compositions emerge, exploring subjects as diverse as ant swarms and starling murmurations, to wind farms and New York taxis.
Central to May’s practice is an attempt to understand time and memory through digital processes. “Algorithmic Photography” brings together twenty images for the first time that provide a broad contextualising overview of the techniques and subject matter May has been engaging with over the past eight years in his Algorithmic Photography practice.
About the speaker
Alex May
Alex May’s wider artistic practice questions how our individual and collective experiences of time, and formation of memories and cultural record, are mediated, expanded, and directed by contemporary technologies.
The work forges creative links between art, science, and technology through a wide range of digital new media, including virtual and augmented reality, photogrammetry, photography, interactive robotic artworks, video projection mapping, generative works, performance, and video and sound art.
May has an international exhibition profile, including Tate Modern (London), MIT Museum (USA), Nobel Prize Museum (Sweden), ZKM (Germany), Ars Electronica (Austria), Milan Triennale (Italy), Beijing Art and Technology Biennale (China), WRO Media Art Biennale (Poland), HeK Basel (Switzerland), Kunstlerhaus Vienna (Austria), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), The Francis Crick Institute (London), Science Gallery Dublin (Ireland) and Science Gallery Bengaluru (India), ZHI Art Museum (China), and the Beall Center for Art + Technology, University of California, Irvine (USA).
His work is held in the collections of ZKM, The Computer Arts Society, and The Amelia Scott (Tunbridge Wells).
Alex May’s website is https://alexmayarts.co.uk/ and he can be found on Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and YouTube as @alexmayarts.
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This event is brought to you by: Computer Arts Society