Dataisnature and Jorinde Voigt

Paul Prudence is an artist and real-time visual performer working with computational and visual feedback systems and video. He’s also researcher and writer at Dataisnature (http://dataisnature.com/), a weblog covering Robot Art, Algorithmic and Procedural Art, Computational Aesthetics, Glitch Aesthetics, Vj’ing, Video Art, Computational Archaeology and similar subjects.

I find many of the articles on his blog fascinating. It’s easy to lose hours just poking around the various articles and links he provides.

One of the articles which caught my particular attention is about the work of artist Jorinde Voigt (posted 12/2/2008) [1]. Prudence says,

“At the core of Jorinde Voigt’s drawings lays the proposition of a system or set of systems, with many individual parts collaborating and corroborating harmonically. Networked elements are connected, like a sketch for visual programming project, forcing the eye to wander back and forth perusing its nodes as if in musical counterpoint. Its no surprise that Jorinde refers to a set of drawings as ‘Partiturs’ translating to ’scores’ in musical vocabulary. On further inspection we also find representations of fluid dynamics and physical motion, incorporated with the kind of poetry Paul Klee used when taking his lines for a walk. These drawings might be the answer to Klee’s Pedagogical Sketch book for the systems age, combining cybernetic psychogeography, experimental musical notation, and sketches for a parametric utopia in one fell swoop.”

A couple of examples of Voigts drawings are shown here…

VOIGT, Jorinde. 2007, '50 60 Adler, 60 Sekunden, Strom, Popsongs'.


VOIGT, Jorinde. 2008, 'STAAT-RANDOM V'.

You can see more of Voigt’s drawings on http://jorindevoigt.com/blog/?cat=5 [2].

I’m still trying to decide what I really think about these drawings. They are intriguing, delicate, beautiful; yet they seem to imply a greater meaning and order that I want to decipher but can’t. Do I need to be able to understand them or should I just enjoy them for their aesthetic qualities? Is it this implication of intellectual meaning that draws me to them?

For now, I’m simply going to leave them here in my journal to think about.

References:

[1] PRUDENCE, Paul. 2008. 'Jorinde Voigt - Network Dynamism'. Dataisnature. Available at: http://dataisnature.com/?p=479 [accessed 08/01/09]

[2] VOIGT, Jorinde. 2008. 'Archive for the ‘WORKS’ Category'. Studio Jorinde Voigt 08. Available at: http://jorindevoigt.com/blog/?cat=5 [accessed 08/01/09]