ICONS WITH COMPLEX SIMPLICITY

What does a living organism look like that's deadly, yet considered beautiful by those hunting for it? Hidden not within a jungle or a test tube, but within terabytes of big sequence and genome data. Finding the answer to this question was the essence of this recent assignment. A continuation of Big Data themes that seems to have been developing here at the Atelier. It had us venture deeper into the fairly new world of generative art, a trend that's been developing in parallel with the ever increasing power of the Intel chips and multiplying complexity and interconnectivity of all digital systems and our world itself. What I liked about it too, was that it called for the Image Design aspect of our offerings and exploring new CGI tools. Here's a look at some designs then...

R.I.P. H.R. GIGER

H.R. Giger has passed away. One of my favorite artists and artist heroes. Quite possibly the greatest artist of our time. Maybe not with the art elite, but for all who art makes a difference and give shape, a visual of what so many can feel, but not articulate until an artist puts it in front of them. "Hans Ruedi" Giger—right up there with Helnwein and Sorayama—all of whom I got introduced to via Rock'n'Roll record covers. In his case it was Emerson Lake & Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery and of course I had my mind blown by the amazing Alien in the late 70s. I was just looking on the web to find the best version of this album cover image to add to my iconic images folder I've started when I came across the news… I couldn't believe this just happened right now. It's really sad. But with his art being all about death, poison, pain and skeletal remains, I guess you could say what they said about Alice Cooper… getting quite old for a guy who gets executed every night…

Here are some of my all time favorites… Weird, I just downloaded the iTunes version of this LP last week.

1973 ELP "Brain Salad Surgery" Album Cover Art


1979 Erotomechanics VIII


1984 Debbie Harry (Blondie) "KooKoo" Album Cover Art

You can read more about it in today's LA Times. or see more of his art on the Giger Museum Website.

3D YOURSELF (THE RESIN ANNIVERSARY)

Artec, the company that makes the 3D scanner we used on the Human Face of Big Data project just opened a retail store right across the street from Raygun to offer 3D scanning and printing. Sign of the times and what's to come. I remember the first laser printing service store opening up in Palo Alto in the 80s—it was called LaserWrite and offered the first desktop publishers a way to print their Mac creations. Then there was the first scanning, digital output and offset printing place, called Linotext in the 90s. Remember the term "Service Bureau"? And just a few years later AlphaCD Imaging popped up, a franchise too, offering PhotoCD scanning and converting your Syquests, Jazz and Zips to CD—alright, I think I've dated myself sufficiently. So now it's the 3D scanning, printing and face recognition retail store.

I had to check it out, of course. It seems that not only can you get the high end Artec scanning and incredibly detailed 3D output, but it's also tied in to this franchise called Shapify Me, with the idea that anybody with a xBox Kinect camera at home can scan themselves in and then have a small 3D sculpture printed for just 80 dollars there, or as the New York Times calls it—the 3D Selfie. There's definitely a connection to photography. I asked whether the sculptures are hand tinted, as they are reminiscent of the Märklin people waiting at the Black Forest train station, but not only is the 3D data captured but also a 3D photograph and printed as texture right onto the little sculptures. Very soft and Polaroid. But there is something eerily real about them.

For a few, well quite a few, dollars more you can have yourself scanned by the real deal—the $10,000 Artec scanner and then have a 6" replica of yourself printed in very high res with incredible photographic detail. That's for me! Or us actually. With the wedding anniversary coming up on April 1st, I couldn't think of a more unique, or for that matter a more geek memento. So I dragged Claudia over there. She didn't really know what was going on or what this was about, which was great and made it more of a surprise. Call it our Resin Anniversary ;-) Check out this 3D rendering of the model that came from the Artec scanner. I can't wait to see the print!







Want to see something crazy? Check out this UV map—the photo texture mapped onto the 3D scan:

DIAMONDS AND SNAKES

I've always been fascinated by snakes from the days I went out in the forest as a kid to catch them and get a closer look. Intrigued and fascinated too by the Damien Hirst inspired sliced horse in The Cell and his For The Love of God diamond skull. Could snakes and diamonds go together? I wanted to find out...

200 BEST DIGITAL ARTISTS

Having been judged one of the best 200 digital artists on the planet by Luerzer's Archive we received a few copies of what I think is the first official compendium on CGI in print advertising. Although I have seen many of the artists and their work before, never in one place or curated in this way. It's come a long way, this art form that didn't have a home within photography, illustration, retouching or computer graphics, but just somewhere in-between until the term CGI was coined. The book opens with a letter from the Editor that gives some insight into Luerzer's thinking behind the first book of its kind, but also features a breakdown of the countries in which artists submitted from around the world. Why am I not surprised that Germany is Number One with the US a close second? Could it be that CGI is the marriage of method and madness? Two things the Americans and Germans are really good at?

THE WAIT IS OVER. ALMOST.

This new Mac Pro renews my faith in Apple. So glad we hung in there since the last Mac Pro in 2010 and I can't wait to get one (or two ;-) this fall. I find it very futuristic and yet very retro, a bit like this Russian CGI motorcycle, no?

Love it. Rekindles some of the excitement of the Cube days. Wait -- has it really been 13 years already? The Cube... from a pre 9-11 world. And by the way, the Cube was a great machine... the Andy Warhol of computers in my mind. Way ahead of its time even if it was misunderstood by most.

THE VERY BUSY SPIDER

...spun this spider web touched by early morning dew, a CGI image for an advanced wound care patch that helps restore and rebuild tissue structure. Slade Seaholm with hcb|health concepted and art directed this image after looking forward to working with us since the Covidien project. This turned out to be a great venue for our first engagement. We explored numerous environments, camera angles and lighting scenarios before settling on and perfecting this final take.

Final Render

Wireframe Model

Exploration Take

Exploration Take