[spectre] // The New Arena Paintings: Hannah Maclure Centre, Dundee, Scotland //

[Julian Oliver]

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Julian Oliver: The New Arena Paintings, Hannah Maclure Centre

15 February - 30 April 2010

Preview 12 February, 4pm

Abstract Expressionist painters have long explored strategies for decoupling
gestural habit and tendency in their work by means of automatic or chance-based
operations. This exhibition by New Zealand born, Berlin-based, artist Julian
Oliver represents a new strategy along this vein, deploying a computer game as
canvas, paint and brush.

Generated by four software agents in combat in a virtual arena, these new
paintings by Oliver mark a significant evolution of his 2003 game based painting
system, ioq3aPaint. Here, each agent is purposed as a kind of digital brush;
every twitch, lunge and change of state registered immediately as a graphic
mark.

Of the 36 million paintings that will be generated in the duration of the
exhibition, a total of just 250 small prints will be made freely available,
alongside the source code of the system.

A number of large prints selected by Oliver from earlier iterations of the
process will be displayed in the gallery. Each print is made using a
photographic printing method and mounted on substrate of the highest quality.

Links:

		http://ljudmila.org/~julian/ioq3apaint/the-new-arena-paintings/
        http://hannahmaclurecentre.abertay.ac.uk/Julian_Oliver.html

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Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Berlin, Germany 
currently: Dundee, Scotland 
about: http://julianoliver.com