The UMW Media Wall artists for the month of April are Shannon Novak (New Zealand), Jean-Michelle Rolland (France), and Will Hurt (UK).
One Way In / One Way Out – Jean-Michelle Rolland (Marseille, France)
A generative animation built with Processing. 20 wormlike colored shapes draw a strange geometric network as the rebound endlessly inside the borders of the Media Wall .
Jean-Michel Rolland is a French digital artist born in 1972. He produces experimental videos, generative animations, audiovisual performances, interactive installations and VJ sets.
Myers Playground – Shannon Novak (Auckland, New Zealand)
In 1913 Arthur Thomas Myers bought the land between Greys Avenue and Queen Street and gifted this to Auckland city, New Zealand, land he developed into an inner-city park with a free kindergarten and playground. The park was named “Myers Park” in his honour. Myers transformed the neglected land into a space that supported the safety, development, and dreams of many young children. The animated work, Myers Playground, explores this playground as an incubator of ambition, imagination, and confidence, each musical note and accompanying geometric form a synesthetic rendition of a childhood memory.
Shannon Novak is an artist based in Auckland, New Zealand. He works in painting, sculpture, and installation, with a focus on using geometric forms to explore his deep and abiding interest in the interrelationships between sound, colour, form, time, space, and social context. http://www.shannonnovak.com
Field #2 – Will Hurt (Norwich, Norfolk, UK)
One of a series. A single, simple, geometric shape, hanging in and repeated across space. At irregular intervals, in unison, each shape gracefully rotates to a new randomised orientation. Deliberate pacing foregrounds both the act of looking, and our experience of time passing, inviting us to explore a fluctuating digital space.
Will Hurt – Artist Statement
I use computers to create abstract digital spaces containing digital objects ranging from single, minimal, geometric forms to complex masses of thousands of objects. My work is resolved as generative animations, interactive apps and digital prints.
I make work to explore the nature of and relationship between digital space, digital objects and time. How does an objects sit in digital space? How does an object navigate digital space? How do multiple objects interact in digital space? Can you fill a digital space? How does a digital object differ from a physical object? How can a digital object change over time yet still be recognised as the same object?
Computers, programming and 3d graphics are central to my practice, I create work in realtime graphics engines and often show the work running in the engine rather than a recording of it. This allows me to create work that has indefinite run times and never repeats exactly, both qualities specific to the medium. As it’s not always possible to show the work live I do make screening versions for festivals, tending to create a different take for each event.
