About

Tentacle was first conceived in 2019 and started drafting its early abstract contours in 2020 using mostly linear components. It soon developed the ability to produce more controlled gestural abstractions and became capable of effectively collaborating with the other two team members to produce a wide range of drawings, with a distinctive style, which stem from a set of controllable constraints.



e: amir@amirrhariri.com
t: @amir_r_hariri
i: @hariri.amir
w: Amir R Hariri

Amir Hariri is an Iranian-born cross-disciplinary artist working in New York City. He immigrated to the United States to attend college in the early 1990s, earning a Masters’ degree in engineering from Cornell University. Amir spent over a decade working on design projects from concert halls and museums to glass designs for Apple. He also spent 5 years studying painting and printmaking at the Art Students League, during which time he served as an assistant instructor and as a member of the board. His artwork incorporates his professional background in design and engineering, as well as studies in anatomy. Amir has exhibited nationally and internationally, with pieces included in public and private collections in the United States, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, and Japan. Recent awards include the Museum of Arts and Design and NARS Foundation residencies, Smack Mellon ‘Hot Picks’ and the NYFA Fellowship.



e: damon@rustleworks.com
i: @damonholzborn
w: Damon Holzborn
Rustle Works
Bandcamp
YouTube
Github

Damon Holzborn is a Brooklyn based musician, new media artist, and software developer. His new media work includes algorithmic image and language projects, mobile games, music tools, and sound installations. As a musician, he is an improviser and composer who works primarily with electronics, employing custom software, traditional effects, and interactive processes. Holzborn has long relied on instruments that he develops for his own use, creating dynamic software designed for improvisational performance. He has presented his work in the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe and Japan, both as a solo artist and with several ensembles, including Donkey — a decades-long collaboration with musician/filmmaker Hans Fjellestad. He also collaborates with other artists to produce custom technology for their installations and performances, including software or hardware for projects by George Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Miya Masaoka, and Duane Pitre. He holds a BA in music from UCSD and a DMA in composition from Columbia University.



Background



Problems:

  1. Create an automatic process that creates gestural abstractions using contour drawing techniques.
  2. Create a drawing collaborator that can improvise with a visual artist in real-time.

Solutions:

  1. Study how abstract drawings are made by artists. Research what has been written to describe how these types of drawings are created, observed and appreciated. Consider mark-making constraints. Devise a system that can autonomously quantify some of these observations to create an image.
  2. Watch how a drawing is being created by an artist and respond or react based on: location of drawing, type and character of lines used, overall composition (balance, attraction/ repulsion), etc.

By observing draftsmen at work, Tentacle attempted to combine certain rule based habits (such as medium, line quality, material and dimensional constraints, to name a few) with compositional tendencies demonstrated by artists at work, to create a hybrid approach to algorithmic drawing.

Tentacle created editions based on a set of controls (random/fixed/user defined) that affected variables in the code to produce unique outputs.  Each edition was composed of a series of aesthetically unique gestural abstractions that belong to the same set of instructions.

In the live drawing mode, these controls could be automatically adjusted based on the drawing produced by the collaborating artist. This allowed for compositional improvisation between artist and machine, a unique and novel approach that has conceptual links to musical improvisation.

Feature variations correspond to levers such as:

  • Line character/quality: linear or curved (and curve character: path type, spread, regularity, number of control points), length, color, thickness, etc.
  • Line quantity and connectivity (when to pick up the “pen”).
  • Attraction/repulsion regions (based on density, defined areas, and guided randomness).
  • Compositional balance (formal unity and harmony).
  • Improvisation with artist collaborator (live draw mode).