Curated by Antonio Roberts

Patterns and Process by Antonio Roberts

In the selection process for Patterns and Process I wanted to take broad look at algorithmic art. We typically associate the term algorithm with digital art, and perhaps more recently with artificial intelligence, but at its most basic interpretation an algorithm can be a simple set of rules or instructions for a machine or human to execute.

In Patterns and Process I have selected works which show different interpretations of algorithms and how they are implemented across practices including digital art, print, textiles, and graphic design.

Works such as Mock Objects, in which the artist has created software for recognising patterns, show a more modern digital approach to algorithms, whereas works such as Floating Fibres show that algorithms for creating the artworks have been passed down over generations.

Although my artistic and curatorial practice is primarily digital I am always interested in how these new an emerging technologies are informed by and relate to traditional practices.

Line drawing. A series of step-by-step instruction diagrams have been re-drawn on top of each other.

The Love by Proxy Series began in 2020, during a Data Fellowship that I was awarded by the Southwest Creative Technology Network (SWCTN) to explore the mattering of human-data communication and summon a new form of data voice.

In this artwork from the series, I negate the use of colour to work with the term ‘black and white thinking’. A psychologist would refer to this as thinking in absolutes, which can keep an individual from seeing life the way it really is, full of complexity and uncertainty. 

'Semi-Published' is the lovechild of an artist-writer collaboration. It portrays a process of narrative evolving through image and visa versa.

Floating Fibres was a ACW-funded R and D project, working with a lacemaker and coder to create a ‘river blanket’ and lace samples based on atmospheric data and OS maps. This project explored using open source technology to look at Cardiff's rivers through textiles and question our relationship with our city rivers.

Poem in voice font – a typeface I invented using sound bands generated by spoken alphabet.

Mock Objects is a moving image work which consists of a modified version of the debugging output of a popular JavaScript AR library, js-aruco. It shows the augmented reality software algorithm’s best guess of the orientation of a marker in a video scene.

I came across a weave notation book created as a student, that had become water-damaged. The dampness on the weave notation informed a new abstract(ed) visual form stimulated by the intersection of the fragile memory of the original weave notation, the technique of weave, and the damaged artefact. 

A series of prints based on pixelated images of landscape.