Contract / Client

• Parsons the New School for Design / UCLA ArtSci gallery

Project description

• art installation @ UCLA Art/Sci gallery

Scope of work completed

• concept & research
• prototyping and proof of concept
• visual design & coding of software using Processing
• exhibition design, supporting materials & documentation

Concept statement

Amorphous Morphology is a personal project designed to model, map, and study the emergent visual forms complex systems create. Initiated through Parsons Art/Sci program, it is an attempt to discover some gestalt principles and visual clues in complex systems. The approach is similar to Wolfram’s study of visual patterns in cellular automata; but seeks to find similarities by comparative analysis of visual form.

The title of the project is inspired by the words of James Gleick; to map “the morphology of the amorphous” & “to give a shape to that which seems to be inherently shapeless, to stare the messiness of life in the eye.”

The goal of the Amorphous Morphology project is to visually model different types of complex systems in order to create a taxonomy of comparative forms and to explore the opportunity these forms hold for study and education.

The first phase presented here is a comparative analysis of a rudimentary complex particle system responding to simple changes in one discrete parameter at a time. The end goal is to learn about how the parameters and variables in the system effect the emergent visual form.

project proposal pdf: Amorphous Morphology proposal