In this exhibition, Internationally renowned digital artist Alex May presents Algorithmic Photography, a technique he created and pioneered to capture data and reveal hidden or unnoticed information in his own moving image artworks using bespoke computer vision algorithms that he has coded in C++.
Through a multistage process encompassing video capture, motion detection, and colour space conversion, his abstracted compound compositions emerge, exploring subjects as diverse as ant swarms and starling murmurations, to wind farms and New York taxis. Central to May’s practice is an attempt to understand time and memory through digital processes.
Algorithmic Photography brings together twenty images for the first time that provide a broad contextualising overview of the techniques and subject matter May has been engaging with over the past eight years in his Algorithmic Photography practice.
His wider artistic practice questions how our individual and collective experiences of time, and the formation of memories and cultural records, are mediated, expanded, and directed by contemporary technologies. The work forges creative links between art, science, and technology through a wide range of digital new media, including virtual and augmented reality, photogrammetry, photography, interactive robotic artworks, video projection mapping, generative works, performance, and video and sound art.
The exhibition catalogue is available as a free downloadable PDF. A limited number of printed copies are also being made available. There is also a signed exhibition print. Copies can be purchased from the Computer Arts Archive Shop, subject to availability.