Gene Shuman

Statement

Experimenting with video feedback loops on our auditorium's projection system while in college, the artistic potential of recursive systems became readily apparent. Over the proceeding years I began to digitize components of the process one by one until left with an entirely virtual feedback system, exploiting the then novel computational capabilities of GPU's for real time rendering. A virtual feedback system is amenable to mathematical precision. Complex analytic spatial transformations are available in lieu of the roughly affine transformations of a video camera. And the fidelity of the recursion is now limited only by processing capability as opposed to camera CCD quality, projector lenses, placement, etc.

Artworks

The artworks presented here are created by a recursive feedback process. A sequence of frames is generated. Textures and shapes are drawn and the result is combined with a version of the previous frame which is spatially deformed by an elementary complex function. The result is then processed through an origami-like transformation both to add additional self similarity and to reflect the (finite)buffer across the entire plane. Various other artistic transformations & processing steps are implemented along the way as the process is repeated. The algorithm & software have been in development in some form for 19 years, combining my interests in math, computer science and art.