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I'm trying to bring coding Monday back. A bit like a digital ,Justin Timberlake. Anyway, every time I try to get started with my coding I have to spend about a day getting my head in he right spot. Today was no different.

I've been hitting a block with my coding, mainly because I want to understand the meaning and syntax of each bit of code I come across. This is not a bad idea, but it sure is slow work. Talking to a friend reminded me that when I was learning to draw I copied non stop. I didn't over think the lines I just did. So this is the approach I have taken with my coding.

My interest is in generative art and the use of artificial life. I copied the code from a book on coding I have. Despite just copying I did find that I am now beginning to understand the code in use. However I can only understand it bylooking at it not writing it. Still a wiser person than me said that a year from now I'll be a year better at this. Where is all this going? Who knows?

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Conway's Game of Life

I've finally finished (I hope) my self portrait. I started off wanting to have a portrait hidden in a pattern, but I moved on to wanting to involve my love of binary, glitch and generative art. My original idea was to have the portrait emerge from a pattern. The work and my ideas developed through the painting process. (of which I have given a brief account of beneath the painting)I'm attempting to play with elements and layers of identity. Below is the finished piece.

Conway's Loose Life, Oil on canvas, 20" x 24" (51cm x 61cm)

I painted the portrait up to a stage and then photographed it. Uploading the photograph allowed me to play with the photograph digitally. The image was run through a few filters in audacity and had its hexadecimal information altered. The parts of the hexadecimal I altered were converted into binary and were layered on top of painting. Conways game of life rules were applied to the binary on the top third in washes of oil paint. I've placed a really brief video of some of the stages below.

A brief video of the progress of my portrait painting.