M. Stock and M. Bailey

Statement

Mark J. Stock is a scientist, programmer, and artist who creates still and moving images combining elements of nature, physics, chaos, computation, and algorithm. He focuses on works that can be created only with scientifically-accurate research software and methods---never commercial CG software---so he must either write the code himself or borrow it from researchers in their respective fields. Often, these codes have never been re-tasked for artistic purposes. His works explore the tension between the natural world and its simulated counterpart---the one created on supercomputers by scientists and engineers hoping to understand nature's mysteries. Marlene Bailey is a color artist and photographer who constantly experiments with objects, colors, sounds, and ideas; arranging them into new configurations and finding connections in unexpected places. She seeks to inspire herself and others to see beyond the ordinary and everyday.

Artworks

"Synthesis" is a collaboration between a photographic artist and a computational artist. Each aims to capture essential, but often hidden, patterns in the world---the former the constructed world and the latter the natural world. This work contains the synthesis of these patterns: the colors, textures, and forms are overlapping and intertwined as much here as they are in life. Yet the resulting images leave few clues as to their origins. The photographs depict fractal-like and geometric forms, observed with a keen eye to composition. The algorithmic processing involved transferring properties from the source image into fluid dynamic simulation parameters, and evolving the differential equations of viscous flow forward in time until the boundary between the two processes vanished.