After years of making generative art, I felt that my practices are limited by the screen. Most of my generative works are purely digital, same as most of the generative artworks out there. Thus, I started to think about the boundary of generative art and began my research on the possibility of non-digital (or computer-less) generative art.
I first designed an installation that uses laser and prisms to do light drawings.
But during the process of building the system, I found that it didn't work as I thought. The motion of the motors is messy and uncontrollable, and the system creates nothing but total randomness.
In the meantime, I made another experiment, which is a combination of computer generative graphics and an analog optical system. That is BeatWave.
After that, I gradually realized that maybe I should first do more experiments on keeping the computer and introducing analog elements. Maybe the correct way is to make hybrids of them. So I changed the original idea.
I created a customized projection system containing prisms, beam splitters, and mirrors. The system can alter and multiply single-channel black and white images from a projector to create overlay colorful visuals.
It is called DiVison because, in the system, the light beams coming out from the digital projector would be divided and altered through the beam splitters and prisms. After setting up the system, I then composed the black and white computer-generated graphic with the concept of division. Below is a screenshot of the computer generated graphic.
And this is the final outcome:
