Mark Fingerhut
Programing by me.
With Peter Burr and Brenna Murphy
"Pattern Language" is a term coined by architect Christopher Alexander describing the aliveness of certain human ambitions through an index of structural patterns. Some advocates of this design approach claim that ordinary people can use it to successfully solve very large, complex design problems. In this piece, the vocabulary of Alexander’s system is employed towards the construction of an endlessly mutating labyrinth. It premiered as a 4-channel video installation and has since been adapted to film. The piece unfolds as an algorithm that fugues through 5 unique phases. These phases are:
ARCOLOGY
The term "Arcology" is a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology". It is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats. The concept has been primarily popularized, and the term itself coined, by architect Paolo Soleri. It also appears in science fiction.
PATTERN RHYTHMS
Highly organized patterns animate in accordance to audio frequencies and rhythms, resulting in richly layered autostereograms.
HUMANS AT PLAY
Depictions of life inside the arcology, viewed through a surveillance-style framing of the inhabitants building pictoforms via cellular automata.
GAME OF LIFE
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.
STROBE
Light and darkness repeating themselves in rapid succession.
This work premiered in September, 2016 at 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center in New York, NY.