"Code 2000" installation

In 2000, at the Patricia Correia Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA I presented publicly my first generative design art installation. I called it "Code 2000" and I had been working on it for a about 3 years before that. It had a database of elements and each element was described in terms of it's characteristics or properties. (kind of like music is encoded at Pandora) then a program written in Actionscript using Adobe Flash, would run and as a cellular automata type of algorithm would make selections of elements to create patterns of high and low contrast in a multi-dimensional space of those properties. The program would consider the elements behind, in front and adjacent to itself and adjust accordingly, in search of novel and interesting relationships. The results were often quite surprising to me as I'd never know exactly what it was going to do next.

I love this picture... it was taken by me just after the installation. It was installed such that we left it running at night and you could see it from the main window of the gallery and it would play into the main courtyard at Bergamot Station even if no one was there. Also sitting in the chair watching it were my good friends and art dealer Patricia Correia and her husband and artist Steve Shauer. Caught in the reflection is also the art critic for the Los Angeles Weekly Peter Frank (who gave this show the LA Weekly, "Pick of the Week" that week)...

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