Progeny (2006)
Music and animation by Gary Lee Nelson
paintings by Christine Gorbach
Progeny is the investigation of techniques by which small fragments
of existing works are extracted and magnified to become the seeds of
new paintings or compositions. The images seen at the end of the film
are, in part, extracted from a twenty five foot painting by Gorbach.
The making of new art by recomposing older work allows the artist to
explore the human experience of ordering, prioritizing, and discovery.
Technology provides a way to develop a scheme that further explores the
concept of organizing systems as an individual intellectual activity.
Nelson’s animation is a ballet of spheres. Nine small globes
dance with in a larger globe. Nelson textures the surface of each
globe by wrapping one of Gorbach’s paintings around it. The
larger globe functions as background. It is seen from the inside
with Gorbach’s paintings projected on its inner surface. The
plane of the video screen cuts through the equator of the larger globe
such that its opposite side is conceptually behind and enclosing the
viewer. Each globe has its own rotation angle and speed.
The movement of the small globes is controlled by a set of “behaviors”
that determine where they will travel in a 3D space. The home
positions of the globes fall in a 3x3 matrix that is only seen briefly
at the end. The globes can “center” or “home” in the matrix or they can
“wander,” “hide” or “gravitate” singly or in groups. Each globe
has a musical companion that creates sound from the same data that
cause the behaviors. By design, the connection between a globe
and its music is veiled.
Progeny is a scene from a forthcoming larger work called “Emergence” that is structured with genetic algorithms and mathematical models of the bottom-up organization of ant colonies and the flocking of birds, fish and beasts.