11 July 2006
The software-driven artwork of Monash Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA), co-director Jon McCormack is getting huge exposure - literally - on Australia's largest public art billboard.
Dr McCormack's original image was enlarged 3000 per cent to fit the 45 metre long, nine metre high billboard that looms large above a Brisbane freeway at Queensland University of Technology's creative industries precinct.
The commissioned work, 'Bloom', shows five giant computer synthesised plant forms created with research software written by Dr McCormack. The plants are fictional cross-breeds, mutated hybrids of real species that are native to the local area.
The mutated plant species were created by simulation software that mimics the growth and development of plants.
"The program accepts a short sequence of instructions, analogous to DNA, and then it builds the forms automatically," Dr McCormack said. "As the artist you don't paint the picture, you do the equivalent of gene splicing...you can make different plants that could never mate with each other in reality and get these hybrid forms."
Dr McCormack, a leading Australian new media artist with formal IT training, said the software could inform the disciplines of art, IT and biology.
"Biologists traditionally mainly used computers for statistical and data-gathering purposes, but people are starting to understand now that there's a value for simulation in terms of asking the 'what if' questions," he said. "A group at CSIRO use similar methods to model insect attacks on plants."
Dr McCormack said 'Bloom' represented the precinct's focus on technology and research, but is was also creative. It also referred to environmental destruction, depicting both living and dead versions of the same plant, he said.
"There's references to the lost nature that has been cleared away," he said. "There's a big freeway and obviously people are becoming conscious about the impact of burning fossil fuels and human activity in general on the natural environment."
CEMA originated within the Faculty of Information technology and has grown to include researchers from the Faculties of Art and Design and Arts. Researchers explore the theoretical, creative and technical possibilities for electronic media art through a multidisciplinary engagement with science, technology and art.
For more information contact Dr Jon McCormack on +61 3 9905 9298 or Melissa Marino, Media Communications, on + 61 3 9905 2085 or 0437 121 978. High resolution images of the billboard are available.
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