The Laughter

sardonic:
1638, from Fr. sardonique (16c.), from L. sardonius (but as if from L. *sardonicus) in Sardonius risus, loan-translation of Gk. sardonios (gelos) "of bitter or scornful (laughter)," altered from Homeric sardanios (of uncertain origin) by influence of Sardonios "Sardinian," because the Greeks believed that eating a certain plant they called sardonion (lit. "plant from Sardinia,") caused facial convulsions resembling those of sardonic laughter, usually followed by death.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary.

:-)
This is "The laughter". An ironic view of it; I don't like that perspective either. I was about to use a quote from The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, but would be too much.

Burning the papers of my life

Once, I had an obsession for writing, it lasted ten years so it was serious; it drove me to a destructive way of life I wanted to get out to live free, it took a couple of years, so I was pretty hooked. I had to put a lot of mind strength in the task (among others, beside the point). But finally I did it, and burnt all my papers. This image is a personal memorial to my victory, me in the upper left sending papers to the fire: "Burning the papers of my life".
All IGA work, like always.

The stare of others

If you've had a strange day at work you may find a meaning in this image, "the stare of others", my second favourite, without knowing well why. I like its technique, though.
Unnecessary digression; a beautifully powerful line from Chesterton's "Second Childhood": "But I shall not be too old to see the enormous night arise, a cloud that is louder than the world, and the monster made of eyes".
What an intimidating and beautiful starry night (made of eyes!) :-) So chestertonian.


Bilateral inverted symmetry; like always is an interactive genetic algorithms work.

The scream

This is "The scream".

Regatta 2

The olympics again. This is a second version of the "Regatta" one, this time the Yngling regatta. Borges said about himself that his second versions always were inferior to the prior, "like dull and involuntary echoes" of his first versions. I've known many kind of artists and people feeling the same about their work. So then I must assume, without originality, that it is expectable a degraded second version sometimes, and normal that I like more my first one.

Blonde under black silk sheets.

Well, I'll ruin the previous state of mind as I like to do for general underestimation or for not taking myself seriously, one of the two ;-)
Another almost symmetric, this is "Blonde under black silk sheets".

Lotus flower

Another simple image, a lotus flower. I felt inspired by a powerful song by the spanish band Héroes del Silencio, the song was Lotus Flower (Flor de loto), about a little girl adopted by a tormented artist who finds a clear point in its life, thanks to her.
I just tried to reproduce the symbol, the lotus flower, with very few petals, to keep it simple and not have aggressive colours or forms, to be a reminder to myself, nothing more. With one hour a day for ten days of evolving images and changing parameters, think I did it, in spite I'm not a fan of symmetry -this time it had to be simple.

Never was so brief a goodbye,
I was never believed it definitive,
I never loved anybody that much in my life,
never I called an unknown person “my family”,
Never had faith in my philosophy,
Never had neither guru nor guide,
Never despised a lost cause,
I will never deny those are my favorites.
this one is my lotus flower and I was her shade,
this one is my lotus flower, my world will not finish.
How much to wander not to keep nothing, never.
Never a flame remains ignited,
I never held its heat, never more, never more than a day.
I never supported to be an invaded soul,
until I saw, in front of me, by who I would die for!
This one is my lotus flower and I was her shade,
This one is my lotus flower, my world will not be clarified.
How much to wander not to keep nothing, never…
Will you want to rectify the lines of my hands?
Who will scatter at random the remains of the coffee?
And what said the crystal ball when it threw to roll?
What plus I can need?
Have I something to lose?
I cannot lose!

Héroes del silencio, "Flor de loto" (Lotus flower).

Bus stop

When I open my Blogger and Gmail accounts at the same time, I stay blocked for further logins. Sometimes in my hurry I forget that simple fact and lose time to answer comments and publish.

This is "Bus stop", something intended in the imitation of a mural painting we have here in my town, with sad pastel colours and people standing there, in a bus stop.

IEC-IGA tech(nology / nique). 50,39 x 50,39 inches canvas.

The Hammer Thrower

This is another one inspired by the Athens 2004 olympics: "The Hammer Thrower".
"Regatta" was better.

Arborescent structure (wood in the blood flow)

When I was a child in shool one teacher showed us an image of the blood flow with the red blood cells and all, to my mind it looked like wood in red shades.

"The red juice appeared; it fell of the tree to the cup, and immediately a shining ball was made that took the form of a heart done with the sap that ran of that incarnated tree. Resemblance to the blood brought forth the sap of the tree, imitating the true blood. Soon the blood coagulated in there, that is the sap of the red tree, and it was covered with a very ignited blood-like layer when coagulating within the cup, whereas the tree shone by work of the maiden. It is called Red Tree of Seeds but [since then] took the name Chuh Cakché (Tree of the Blood) because its sap it is called Blood."

From the "Popol Vuh", Chapter III.

This is another simple image: "Arborescent structure (wood in the blood flow)", I couldn't stop the nightmares until I took this image of wooden blood off my head.
Less colours, isn't? Because they are red blood wood knots cells, and sanguineous growth rings. ;-)

Quoting Will:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Wow, I need bigger worries.
Well, in fact I don't, have enough, it's just that when I work in this things my mind is in peace, without concerns, and nothing important comes out.

Mathematical freezing

The previous image was simple and this one is too. In spite of that, the genoma to produce the visual effect in this image "phenotype" was pretty complex to achieve.

A mathematical model has been developed to study the process of freezing in biological organs. The model consists of a repetitive unit structure comprising a cylinder of tissue with an axial blood vessel (Krogh cylinder) and it is analysed by the methods of irreversible thermodynamics. The mathematical simulation of the freezing process in liver tissue compares remarkably well with experimental data on the structure of tissue frozen under controlled thermal conditions and the response of liver cells to changes in cooling rate. The study also supports the proposal that the damage mechanism responsible for the lack of success in attempts to preserve tissue in a frozen state, under conditions in which cells in suspension survive freezing, is direct mechanical damage caused by the formation of ice in the vascular system.

"A Mathematical Model for the Freezing Process in Biological Tissue", Rubinsky, B.; Pegg, D. E.


This is "Mathematical freezing". Only three cold colours, basically.
50,39 x 50,39 inches canvas. IEC-IGA tech(nique / nology) as always.

Dreadful bud of the solar flower

Weee! I've just got my Solaris operating System by mail, what a nerdy feast! :-D Three DVD, one for 32-64 bits PC, one for Sparc, one for java developers. Free overseas shipping, what a great idea. ;-) Thanks Sun Microsystems! (shameless advertising).
So I looked for something about the sun or the dawn (solaris logo) into my artwork directory, and I've found "Dreadful bud of the solar flower".

Let's take a nerdy peek at it, *lol*, I'm so amused:

Flower heliotropism represents a quintessential trait for studying the effects of floral variation on the parental environment for offspring (or gametophyte) development. Solar-tracking flowers are warmer and better illuminated than stationary flowers.

(Candace Galen / Maureen L. Stanton, "Sunny-side up: flower heliotropism...").


Or let's take the groovy, hippie peek at it:

Once in a green time a flower
Oh, fell in love with the sun.
The passion lasted for an hour
And then she wilted from her loved one.

And I see you looking up at the sky, how high it is, yeah.
You wonder if there is, whoa another me
Now how can that be, how can it be ?
Well, I sit here and I ask you, why all this ?

Janis Joplin, "Flower in the sun"

So, choose your favourite perspective. :-) This is "Dreadful bud of the solar flower".




50,39 x 37,79 inches canvas. IEC-IGA tech(nique/nology).

Regatta

Watching my old "paintings" I saw several which were inspired by the Athens 2004 Olympics. Then that means that I have around five years doing this kind of works with IGA, not two. Damn!, how the time flies for me! I forgot how much time I had with Interactive Genetic Algorithms until I started to show the images!

This is one of my all times favourite, called "Regatta", inspired by the Laser - One Person sailing category at the Athens olympics.

One sail, one soul, a lot of freedom. At 2004, I intended it to be delightful. I hope someone can enjoy it as I did.





The image pixelization comes from the resizing. As always, IGA production, 50,39 x 37,79 inches canvas.

Glance through the blinds of the fatigue

12:58 a.m. in Argentina.

Busy day at work. Tomorrow (today) 18th will be too... cannot "conciliate" a simple sleep. A couple of hard nights for the world, I believe.
When I'm tormented, I've always liked Paul Klee to ease my mind: "Colour has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever ... Colour and I are one. I am a painter."

Borges has its strong power too:

What is the insomnia?

The question is rhetorical; I know the answer too much well.
It is to fear and to count in the high night the fatal hard peals, is to try with useless magic a regular breathing, is the load of a body which abruptly changes side, it is to tighten the eyelids, it is a state similar to the fever and that certainly is not the wakefulness, is to pronounce fragments of paragraphs already read for many years, is to know itself guilty of guarding when others sleep, is to want to sink into the dream and not to be able to sink into the dream, is the horror of being and of continue being, it is the doubtful dawn.

What is the longevity?

It is the horror of being in a human body whose faculties decline, is an insomnia measured by decades and not by clock steel needles, is the weight of seas and pyramids, of old libraries and dynasties, of the dawns that Adam saw, it is not to ignore that I am condemned to my flesh, to my detested voice, my name, to one routine of memories, to the spanish, that I do not know how to handle, to the Latin nostalgy, that it is not of my acquaintance, to want to sink myself in the death and not to be able to sink myself in the death, to being and continuing being.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Two forms of insomnia".


I can upload something related, I have two years of works waiting to come out (many are useless): This is "Glance through the blinds of the fatigue". Poor and sad colours. Like the worn away insomniac look.




Sometimes there is no way to get an ease.

Continuous flower.

Our U.S. friends are tearing their hearts out by an incomprehensible tragedy. Inaction, disdain of danger, and degradation to public violence collided in a shocking day for the Virginia Tech, the nation and the world.
Paul and Bryce, between others, were blogging their experiences and emotions. Words cannot express enough condolences.
I still remain recalling unconnected literature moments, like an insomniac.

"As a hill images itself in some clear lake, as though upon its own rich verdancy to gaze, so in that light, around that eminence, round and around in thousand ranks I saw the conquering saints of God. And if so low, so large the light, the concourse, nearly viewed, judge what must be the outmost amplitude of the wide petals of that golden Rose. But not the great breadth nor the ample height could give denial to mine eager sight of the full sweep of that ranged ecstasy. For, where God is, nor near nor far can be, nor Nature's laws have any meaning there. Within the gold of the eternal Rose Beatrice drew me, while its petals spread wide open to that sun which round it shed an everlasting spring, the while its praise continual perfume gave."

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso.


This is "Continuous flower".
We want to believe in a higher instance. Life goes on. That includes our heartache; fortunately pain relief may come from other people.

Explosion over the skull of the world

One new era of nuclear fear? No, no, just one paranoid mediocre artist.

This is "Explosion over the skull of the world".
I started within a small canvas with pixelized white shades, so things went awry in general, but manage myself to evolve the G.A. into enough "ill", disgusting colours, or "nuke luminance". I'll no redo, just forget; let serious working to serious artists. :-P





Nasty... :-)

Dawn on the freezed planet

White

White
Shining
Shining brightly
Pure crystal snow
White
Oh, virgin

Snow is crystal, the fire is cold
I sit back, watch the sun turn gold
In the morning, love is healing
Warms the frost deep in my bones
And then your mother said
[...]
The hunter sits on a pure white stallion
A hawk in flight, the bow in his hand
A deer approaches at the end of the forest
The arrow flies, blood on the snow
[...]
Snow is crystal
Love is pure
I look out and see a hawk in flight
The forest awaits me, the keel awaits me
I reel back, watch the sun turn to gold

Earth in the mother
Said white
Sure crystal clear, yeah, virgin white
Wilderness, lost to us
Wilderness, we reach out
Wilderness, we must embrace you once more
[...]
City draggin' me down
That's grey
Life is grey
Gotta get the rhythm

Don't tell me what I'm feelin', ow
White
[...]

The Cult, White (Astbury-Duffy).


This is "Dawn on the freezed planet".





Greets.

The Morning Star Daemon

WOW! A little old news: On april 1st a new form of matter-antimatter transformation was announced (yes, again), check this link for more info.

A new demon head is dawning for a bigger swear to cast upon him. ;-)

Can you imagine the possibilities of Transgenic Bio-Art over this? Wouldn't be outstandingly beautiful!?! I can't wait to see what Eduardo Kac could do with this tech added to cloning!

Accordingly to the issue, this is "The Morning Star Daemon", with the old greeks sense of daemon (Δαίμων), and the new sense of anti-matter, may be.




50,39 x 50,39 inches canvas. IEC - IGA - HBGA tech. I hope you like it.

In another order of things, I am getting deaf with the Iron Maiden's latest album. Intense and recommendable.

The Phantom of the Opera

[...]
There, turn round...are you glad? You're free now.

...Oh, my poor Christine, look at your wrists: tell me, have I hurt them?...That alone deserves death....Talking of death, I MUST SING HIS REQUIEM!"

Hearing these terrible remarks, I received an awful presentiment

...I too had once rung at the monster's door...and, without knowing it, must have set some warning current in motion.

And I remembered the two arms that had emerged from the inky waters.

...What poor wretch had strayed to that shore this time? Who was `the other one,' the one whose requiem we now heard sung?

Erik sang like the god of thunder, sang a DIES IRAE that enveloped us as in a storm. The elements seemed to rage around us. Suddenly, the organ and the voice ceased
[...]

Gaston Leroux, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra.

[...]
Is someone getting the best of you?
Has someone taken your faith?
It's real, the pain you feel
The life, the love you'd die to heal
The hope that starts the broken heart
Your trust? You must confess
Is someone getting the best of you?
[...]

Foo Fighters, "Best of You".



This is "The Phantom of the Opera", looking at you from the left side of the picture, also, you are projecting some mangentish / blueish shadow to the picture too, hihihi, that's your fear, boy/girl... :







As always, produced through IEC (Interactive Evolutionary Computation) to manage IGA (Interactive Genetic Algorithms), just to lose my time creating images, or paintings if you are permissive. So, it is Evolutionary Art in the end, may pass for neofauvist, may pass for cubist, I don't care. :-)

Pretty different "style" (or HBGA, human-based genetic algorithm) than previous ones.

50,39 x 37,79 inches canvas. I hope you like it.

Beam of fire in Polyphemus eye

Working late. Fifteen minutes coffeebreak. Enough time to let the NetAdmin (me) upload some crap to his own blog. Then the NetAdmin will erase his tracks from the server logs. Unfair to others who cannot use the company internet connection to personal affairs, but, well, the NetAdmin freak is a Proxy/Firewall trespasser. Hihihi. Ohhh, my ethics...
Going on with my/our friends, the ancient greeks, in Homer's Odyssey: guile Odysseus at the cyclops cave presented himself to Polyphemus (son of Posidon) as "NoMan", hardened an olive wood beam, using fire in its tip from the Polyphemus own cave bonfire, and he with his men, sunked the beam in Polyphemus only giant eye. He screamed that NoMan was hurting him, so no other Cyclop went to his aid.

[...] Then I thrust the beam of wood far into the embers to heat it, and encouraged my men lest any of them should turn faint-hearted. When the wood, green though it was, was about to blaze, I drew it out of the fire glowing with heat, and my men gathered round me, for heaven had filled their hearts with courage. We drove the sharp end of the beam into the monster's eye, and bearing upon it with all my weight I kept turning it round and round as though I were boring a hole in a ship's plank with an auger, which two men with a wheel and strap can keep on turning as long as they choose. Even thus did we bore the red hot beam into his eye, till the boiling blood bubbled all over it as we worked it round and round, so that the steam from the burning eyeball scalded his eyelids and eyebrows, and the roots of the eye sputtered in the fire. As a blacksmith plunges an axe or hatchet into cold water to temper it- for it is this that gives strength to the iron- and it makes a great hiss as he does so, even thus did the Cyclops' eye hiss round the beam of olive wood, and his hideous yells made the cave ring again. We ran away in a fright, but he plucked the beam all besmirched with gore from his eye, and hurled it from him in a frenzy of rage and pain, shouting as he did so to the other Cyclopes who lived on the bleak headlands near him; so they gathered from all quarters round his cave when they heard him crying, and asked what was the matter with him.

"'What ails you, Polyphemus,' said they, 'that you make such a noise, breaking the stillness of the night, and preventing us from being able to sleep? Surely no man is carrying off your sheep? Surely no man is trying to kill you either by fraud or by force? "But Polyphemus shouted to them from inside the cave, 'Noman is killing me by fraud! Noman is killing me by force!'

"'Then,' said they, 'if no man is attacking you, you must be ill; when Jove makes people ill, there is no help for it, and you had better pray to your father Posidon.'

"Then they went away, and I laughed inwardly at the success of my clever stratagem [...]

This is "Beam of fire in Polyphemus eye", giant Polyphemus eye in the upper right, Odysseus under the light of fire, down left; and the scream and blood, washing the cave.



Click to enlarge if you want, it is a neofauvist painting worked out with Evolutionary Art software (genetic algorithms related; nothing to do with fractal art). Think it as a 2 meter x 2 meter canvas.
I'm doubtfully hoping someone can enjoy it at some level. :-/

Cheers.

Atlas holding up the vault of the vast sky.

Unfortunately for me, I'll be off for some time, taking care of a stupid project for work. Will be hard finding time to write some neofauvist theory, because it needs concentration. The occasional reader might feel relieved. :-)
I let something very outside any fauvist trend: "Atlas holding up the vault of the vast sky" (Atlas aguantando la bóveda del vasto cielo). One big symbol of existential loneliness, from our friends, the ancient greeks.
Evolutionary art as always. You can click to enlarge.
I like the black zone more than anything, can you believe it? I can. :-)

Enjoy if _you_ can. :-)

Machete duel, sound of the drum, and six senses in colours (five plus time succession).

What else can be done? Which other elements might be added to fauvist painting to take it to neofauvist painting? (I mean to really _new_ fauvism evolved from new ideas, theories and techniques, not neofauvism just for being produced by a contemporary fauvist artist). The "neo" quality must be granted by the theory evolving the movement, not by its chronologic state: a new painter that paints like the old fauvists is not a neofauvist.
In my previous post I tried to prove some points in favour of space and time distortion, and in favour of reduction, distortion, or addition of constitutive components of the represented figure (elements that were appearing since the first impressionist show, the cubist and the expressionist trend).
Then, elements of the pop culture can be added as well. I find appropiate the action and movement expressions from in the comic books. Evolving the concept enough something useful may appear. An axe hitting a tree, creating a colourful explosion from the point of contact, expresses a strong hit and splinters spreading. OK. A real fight with machetes may cause an even stronger impression in a person, I've created this one, Machete duel (duelo con machetes) based on the impression of two persons in a violent duel, crashing each other machetes; red, green, one attacking, one defending:



That is a simple example of colour expressing the inner state of the artist, or only the movement or the crashing of two machetes if you want... and each time we are more and more approaching the expressionist and neoexpressionist trend. But I think we'll not get into it. Why? Expressionism may, or may not, use the colour (or even the space, time and motion elements) to achieve its goals. Fauvism has to, it is forced by its attachment to the colour value, it becomes essential. But there are more elements to use. Colour might represent easily the visual, the movement too; but, what about the movement, the visual _and_ the sound in one represented moment? This is a simple example of mine called "Visualizing the sound of the drums" (visualizando el sonido del tambor)... look at the cold colour environment compared with the Machete Duel hot one, and the apparent waves of sound embracing the whole image:



So, it's interesting: in fauvism, the colour doesn't have a "descriptive obligation" (to describe nature), it's not forced to use the colour in a naturalist manner to describe things as they are coloured, now, using the colour as in the Machete Duel and (...)Sound of the Drum, the descriptive obligation is back in neofauvism? at least not in a naturalistic manner, will never be, but perhaps evolved in other descriptive obligations, with some inclination to other senses, like hearing (the influence of sound and noise of the 21th century), and touch, smell and taste too. Moral inclination to issues of violence in general might be expressed, from the perspective of the artist, through colours; present times give enough influence.
Fauvism was extremely influential, but short lived. I like it so much, and find it so well-prospected, that I think it might be recovered as neofauvism, merging elements of other trends, like this ones I show.
If everything goes right with my time, I'll be back with some emotional and moral issues in colours; the real power of colours, which may turn neofauvism in an interesting fine art movement, with luck and good artists interested.

I hope you like this two paintings.

At the surgery table.

Well, so then, one may ask, what is neofauvism?, how you will manipulate a preceding model (the fauvist one) to attach to it some new structure or components that might appear as an evolution of the previous state?.
I'd say: Can you wait for a second? :-) I'm a fauve, some kind of fierce character, don't push me :-)
At first, know that fauvism takes out the obligation of colours to be descriptive (colour becomes another order of meaning). White bones may appear as colourful bones (like in the preceding post below). Basically that's fauvism, sort of still naturalistic representation of figures with a fierce colourful stand at representing the inner state of the artist; because the artist shows its internal states in colours, so, the naturalistic figures: are the outside world; the fauvist colours: represent the many times tormented artist, longing for freedom over restrictions. Basically.
So, how to go beyond? Well, widening the painting spectrum, by adding more impressionist or expressionist elements in the yet naturalist parts of the whole... Yet, HOW? Don't push! :-) We all know that the figurative world came down to knowledge to create a tree of archetypes: a table is recognized as a table no matter how crooked it is, as far as it contains its component parts related as we know the tables are in general.
Then: relaxing the figures in space, or reducing them to the minimum recognizable components is one step forward to _neo_ fauvism.
But there are more: Perspective too, we might distort the perpective to allow us to see more than one environment or moment in time (and there are even more possibilities).
So, then, figures relaxed, and perpective (space) and time (succession) distorted to allow a wider experience to the spectator, and wider creative experience to the painter, are two of many more elements that can be added to fauvism to take it to neofauvism.
One simple example is this painting of mine: "En la mesa de operaciones" (At the surgery table), where you can see one body reduced in constitutive elements (A doctor), the lights over the table, and the lights over the hospital hallway, all elements lived through by the patient (painter/spectator may be) during its distressed time in its way to the surgery room.




I'll like to have a neofauvist manifesto sometime, but I'm sooo laaazy to think the theory...

All the paintings I post here are created with an evolutionary art software that allows me to mutate and evolve specimens (forms and colours) using genetic algorithms. One might say that they are living forms in some way; but not me, I'm not crazy, man. :-)

I hope you enjoy this one.

Ribcage.

This one is "Caja Toráxica" (ribcage). This is a simple painting that went out of a pretty simple genetic algorith. Still not completely _neo_fauvist one. Unfortunately I lost most of the seeds I used to create my paintings, when I erased by mistake my /math directory. EXT3 filesystem didn't allow me (or anyone) to recover erased directories. :(

The anger of the colours.

So this one is from 2005, "El enojo de los colores", or "anger of the colours". I was just starting at evolutionary art, and thought it as some kind of neofauvist declaration, instead, it ended up being an abstract painting. WTH.
Much better ones are coming, at least better than this crappy thing.

I'll be uploading paintings to a gallery of mine in the www.renderosity.com server. I'd add a link when finished. I hate not having enough time for this kind of stuff. Bah, who cares.

Introductions...

It's time to introduce myself, just to be polite :)

I'm runnerfrog, my real name is on the right, plus some other data.

I'll be posting old and new evolutionary art paintings. No matter if no-one in the world cares, but I'll appreciate input about the legibility of the blog. I have been experimenting dissatisfaction about the font changes between my GNU/Linux and some other people's Windows boxes. My friends (in Windows) said that the fonts are tiny, in my box (1280x1024) I see them huge. 8-|

EDIT: Got it, it's just the browser font config. Nevermind.

More about me, I like reading other people poetry blogs. If you have one, tell me.
I'm a network administrator, but also a computer science teacher in a difficult and aggressive zone of the world (around a big garbage dump), just because I wanted to lose money that way, and because I like those kids.

In hours I'll be showing something to see, but I can't take it seriously, so I hope anyone will do either. If everything goes as expected, I'll have the zero counter all the time. :-P

Cheers!