My generative artwork uses 23 pictures of myself, one from every year of my life. As I am only 22, these images start from right after my birth to the present. My program rotates through all of these images in chronological order at 10 seconds per image. I chose 10 seconds because it is my lucky number and is personal to me. Users are invited to guide the cursor around the canvas, to reveal multiple pixel’s colours surrounding the mouse location. The time rotation works at 10 seconds because it is not long enough for the user to reveal one whole image. As time passes and the images change, the user creates their own image from a combination of all of the images, differing every time.
The concept behind this artwork is that as time passes, people change. How we change and grow is manipulated by our interactions with people and choices that are made. As people interact with my life’s images, the outcome of my final image is different every time depending on the user’s choices.
I chose to display the pixel colours in circles for aesthetic purposes, as they resemble Ben Day dots with the opacity and overlay. Ben Day dots were once used in the printing process for print media such as comic books and newspapers. These Ben Day dots are significant to me because newspapers have been a big part of my entire life. My father and uncle have owned our local newspaper since before I was born, and I have always tried to involve myself in the business as much as I can. I currently work part time as a graphic designer throughout the school year. I also appreciate that the aesthetic resembles pointillism (Such as explored by Georges Seurat in his famous painting Un Dimanche Après-Midi À L'île De La Grande Jatte of 1884).