Solo Works

This interactive installation uses a depth camera to map visitors’ bodies as a 3D growth surface for neural cellular automata (NCAs)—simple AI agents that self-organize into complex organic patterns resembling roots, leaves, and flowers. Both movement and stillness produce distinct visual results, rewarding dance and contemplation alike. Trained on natural imagery over millions of simulations, the NCAs echo the phenomenon of emergence: how simple local interactions give rise to large-scale complexity. Integration with the Shroomiverse installation allows additional interactions that alter NCA styles, colors, and behaviors on screen.

Melete is an interactive video installation telling a personal story about drawing, machine learning, data and failure. The installation documents a long-running project to build a dataset of drawings and experiment with machine learning algorithms. 

This “interactive video installation” is viewable by a single participant at a time and lasts 15 minutes. It consists of alternate narration and drawing exercises.

The installation runs automatically, and is managed by an openFrameworks application. The video is split between a projector and a Wacom graphics tablet. The drawings made by the participants are captured and plotted as part of the installation.

Drawing is one of the oldest and most elemental creative disciplines. By making simple marks in response to what we see, we are training many of the core abilities of an artist, from close observation and mark making to creative expression and imagination. Life drawing in particular, involves dissolving the most intimate of subjects—the human body—into a 2D representation that packages all of our aesthetic and emotive responses. As technology continues to influence our lives in new and pervasive ways, so to must drawing’s potential to utilise and reflect on those changes.