Joshua

http://www.joshuadavis.com/
studio@joshuadavis.com

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What is Dynamic Abstraction?

I didn’t know.

It wasn’t until 2004 when I was asked by MIT digital designer, educator, and artist John Maeda to write an essay in his book “Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation” in the chapter entitled “Dynamic Abstraction”, that I finally had the 2 words that described a process that I was using to create my work for several years.

In the essay, I identify two clear points.

“Among modern artists I conceptually identify with Jackson Pollock - not that I’m a particular fan of his visual style, but because he always identified himself as a painter, even though a lot of the time his brush never hit the canvas. There’s something in that disconnect - not using a brush or tool in traditional methods.”

and…

“Pollock might argue that it’s the process of abstraction that’s dynamic, not the end result, which in his case is a static painting. In my own work, the end result is never static; by making room for as many anomalies as possible, every composition generated by the programs we write is unique to itself. I’ll program the “brushes,” the “paints,” the “strokes,” the “rules”, and the “boundaries”. However it is the software that creates the compositions — the programs draw themselves. I am in a constant state of surprise and discovery, because the program may structure compositions that I may never have thought of to execute or might take me hours to create manually.”

“Dynamic Abstraction”, Dynamic because the programming could output an endless array of compositions. Abstraction defined multiple meanings in the process… I was abstracting the act or process of being a designer and doing design, but also my personal visual aesthetic is rooted in abstraction.

This website will act as a companion to the ideas presented and files produced in many of the workshop classes that I teach each year around the world. For information on attending a workshop please visit the “calendar of events” section on the http://www.joshuadavis.com website for workshop locations and dates.