Digital images by Julie Clarke in GA2013 exhibition at LA TRIENNALE DI MILANO, ITALY, 2013

Thanks to the curator Celestino Soddu and artist/assistant professor Daniela Sirbu (Canada) here is a photograph (taken by Daniela) of my works in the Generative Art 2013 exhibition held at LA TRIENNALE di Milano, Italy from 9-12 December last year. They took quite a novel approach in that they presented digital images and other works on painting easels. Contemporary art that references a more traditional one. Eleven artists were shown in the exhibition, however I was the only Australian whose work was represented.

Digital images by Julie Clarke, photograph by Daniela Sirbu (2013)

Here is my rationale for the photographs:

My artworks are the product of the generative approach in that, although my original intention was to simply photograph people playing in the floodlit park at night, my camera’s internal function automatically adjusted the exposure, which resulted in the distant figures being captured in what looks like slow motion. By using Photoshop I selected the body/ies of the people in the original photographs to highlight the section I found most compelling since they are simultaneously represented as depicting movement as well as stasis. If generative art is made with autonomous systems (computer and digital apparatus) and depends largely on the intervention of a non-human agent then these photographs may be considered generative, since a certain amount of chance determined the outcome, which includes the colour saturation of the yellow, high intensity artificial lights used to flood the park.The images relate to early Futurism and the concepts of future, speed, technology and the fact that the world is in constant movement. More importantly, the photographs acutely reveal that it is only the mechanical eye (not the human eye) that can capture exquisite, minute, human velocity. This too relates to generative or emergent art because of the image’s reference to repetition, complexity, (dis)order and the sometimes ambiguity of content such as that created in one of the photographs in which there was no dog and yet there appears to be one.