Algorithmic Visualizations" consists of images created directly from mathematical equations that have their origins in image processing algorithms used to enhance or analyze digitized images. This approach consists of rule-based processes that integrate frequency modulations, adaptive algorithms, randomness and noise. When I first began to work with these algorithms in the mid 1980’s it became quickly apparent that I could leave out the referent image to be processed, and explore the aesthetic potential of the algorithms themselves. One can consider that these images are therefore visual expressions of the equations, shaped, and massaged as McLuhan would say, to arrive at new aesthetic forms.
As the sculptor George Rickey has pointed out in his book "Constructivism", prototypes of abstract, geometric generated images have appeared in many forms since Antiquities. Notable examples include architectural elements such as Roman bath floors, Islamic lattices, Celtic interlaces, and highly complex, extraordinary artifacts such as pottery, rugs and baskets produced by indigenous cultures worldwide. The mathematician Stephan Wolfram observes that repetitive and nested patterns used to generate ancient abstract images were attempts to see if simple abstract rules could represent the behavior of natural systems.
This ongoing project has evolved and been inspired by discursive debates concerned with issues of authorship, the question of material, systems based organizing principles, and industrial modes of fabrication and production coming out of minimalism and the conceptual art movement. From an art historical perspectives, I have revisited the aesthetic quality of 1960's abstract art based on mathematical models by François Morellet, Bridget Riley, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Frank and Vera Molnar, Agnes Denes, Gruppo N, Friede Nake, to name a few, whose work can be considered as historical precedents to current digital based media arts.