Linear Compositions
An hour-long live audiovisual installation inspired by the Lines series of the Czech painter Zdeněk Sýkora, a pioneer of computer-aided art. Real-time generative graphics in TouchDesigner, with vector lines generated in Python.
In 1973 Sýkora began painting tangled, colourful lines whose course, width, colour and turns were all set by chance, through random numbers and computer programs, and then painted by hand. Linear Compositions asks how those lines might move. They draw themselves across the screen, curve, cross and erase themselves, weave into grids, circle a centre and bounce off the edges of the frame, across sixteen chapters that flow into one another over an hour.
The live sound is analysed in real time. Low, middle and high frequencies set the thickness of the heavy, medium and finest lines, so the compositions keep Sýkora's rules of chance while the sound in the room makes them breathe. No works by Sýkora are reproduced.
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