plural blog

@Columbia College Chicago
916 S. Wabash Ave, Room 150
Saturday, Feb 13 / 3:45 – 5:15 pm

Chair: Adam Trowbridge / Panelists: Janell Baxter, Fabian Winkler, Rebecca Bryant, Carol Cunningham-Sigman, Olivia Ciummo & Sharon Göpfert

Panel Abstract: There is an unexplored affinity between the fields of generative art, movement-based theater, and artificial life explorations. In all three fields, complex behavior emerges from a limited rule set. In a “balancing the space” exercise, performers enter into, leave from and interact within a marked space based on simple constraints intended to keep the space balanced with their collective presence. John Conway’s Game of Life, and other cellular automata, simulate moving life forms visually using a pixel grid and a set of rules that governs their emergence and disappearance. Cellular automata and boids, artificial life programs that simulate flocking behavior, are the basis of process-based work like that of Karl Sims and C.E.B. Reas. What possibilities open when the human body intersects with a structured set of rules? How can performance move artificial life off the screen and into human space? What devices and interfaces exist to bridge algorithmic art and live theater? This panel will present and discuss perspectives on the fields of generative performance and digital art as well as offer the opportunity for considering ways that they may intersect in the future. Panelists will address historical and contemporary works in the fields of generative art, artificial life and movement-based theater.