Interview with LIA

proximityofneeds_web

Lia presents the piece Proximity Of Needs at Share Prize 2009.


What role does digital art play in representing complexity and chaos?

With code and the use of the random factor you can have the fascination of unexpected results which enables you to do things that noone could have envisioned before.
You can create more complex works than it would be possible with any traditional artistic tools.


How do you interact with market forces in your everyday life? Would you say that the hardware and software architectures of our digital reality are market forces that stifle artists or do they open up new expressive potential?

On the hardware side i think that today the hardware needed to create digital art is quite affordable (in comparison to other professional hardware requirements like for instance for photography).
On the software side now there are many open source programmes available – like for instance processing (www.processing.org) or openframeworks (www.openframeworks.cc) – that allow to start to create digital works without having to invest a large amount of money into software .


What idea first inspired you and what did you learn from that project?

My work deals mainly with the visualisation (and sometimes sonification) of various principles. I “translate” those principles (like in the case of proximityOfNeeds the principle of attraction is the main theme) to a visual (or audiovisual) level to be experienced and explored by the user/visitor. I like the idea that everyone can see and experience and interprete my works in a very personal way.

What were the attractors, the force fields that drove you towards generative art?
What i like about generative art is that interaction is possible, motion is possible, changes are possible. Nothing is really predictable and everything can happen (in a predefined range of possibilities). If there is an idea i want to visualize then the code used to create the work can lead to something exciting that could not happen that easily with traditional artforms. But you can use code in a similar way you use traditional artistic materials/tools and finetune your work until you are satisfied with the results