Select Art & Projects

Detail of flitting installation looking out into the street.

flitting

Separation, alignment and cohesion. Individual agents adhering to three simple rules can create something complex, elegant and beautiful.

flitting is an analogue exploration of the popular artificial life computer algorithm boids . Originally developed in 1986 by computer programmer Craig Reynolds boids is everywhere you’ve never bothered to look. It’s been used to study the flocking behaviour of Starlings and create the computer-generated bat swarms in Batman Returns. It’s the algorithm behind swarm robotics, where groups of small robots or drones are programmed to work in cohesion and it’s automatically programming dozens of internet radio stations at once.

But before the algorithm puts all the DJ’s out of work starts dropping bombs on humans let’s look at how pretty it can be.

Separation, alignment and cohesion. Individual agents adhering to three simple rules can create something complex, elegant and beautiful.

flitting is an analogue exploration of the popular artificial life computer algorithm 'boids'. Originally developed in 1986 by computer programmer Craig Reynolds 'boids' is everywhere you’ve never bothered to look. It’s been used to study the flocking behaviour of Starlings and create the computer-generated bat swarms in Batman Returns. It’s the algorithm behind swarm robotics, where groups of small robots or drones are programmed to work in cohesion and it’s automatically programming dozens of internet radio stations at once.

But before the algorithm puts all the DJ’s out of work starts dropping bombs on humans let’s look at how pretty it can be.

flitting , 2019
acrylic paint on duralar polyester sheets
25” x 40”
Verity Griscti

Connect the Dots

Connect The Dots was a weekend-long experiment in interactive artmaking where visitors helped create a large-scale painting of a random walk.

Beginning with a white canvas, a faint grid, and one randomly placed dot fair-goers contributed one, and only one, new dot in an adjacent square in the colour of their choice. Throughout Maker Festival, the chain of dots lengthened and changed direction, continuously altering the work. The final painting never had a central designer or maker, having been shaped by the crowd.

By the end of Maker Festival, over 300 participants, mostly children, had contributed to the piece. The contributors subverted the rules early on, contributing individual drawings instead of solid dots.

final image of connect the dots
final image of connect the dots
final image of connect the dots
final image of connect the dots
A white toilet with a flock of red and blue dots elegantly moving up the middle of the toilet seat.

Building Up! Toilet Seat

Here's something a little different. In 2018 I painted this toilet seat for a fundraiser for Building Up, a Toronto based non-profit construction contractor.

rimless

A drunk staggers home, an animal forages for food, a gambler wins and loses a fortune on a dice roll, and the scientist plots their every move neatly on a graph. Eventually, a model is determined and an algorithm created and all the romance gets sucked out of nature. We run around modelling everything: molecules, bird flight, real-estate prices. We measure everything we can't predict and take comfort in its tamed presentation between neatly labelled x and y-axes.

Mathematicians, economists and biologists model randomness in the hopes of unlocking a better understanding of their subjects. I model randomness because it's messy, often plain and occasionally beautiful, even whimsical. Chance will ultimately roll over neatly defined borders and overflow onto its surroundings. It may look plain, divine or foul but it's a force that's always there.

rimless , 2017
Mixed Media
dimensions variable

indoor installation of flitting

Elliptical Walkers

Elliptical Walkers is a series of digital prints that explore the image making potential of 'random walks'.

Elliptical Walk I
Elliptical Walk II
Elliptical Walk III
Elliptical Walk IV
Elliptical Walk V
Elliptical Walk VI

Artist Statement

I combine my art school education and interests in digital technology and computation to make images that explore stochastic and complex processes found in nature. I use code to create works that depict the beauty and underlying patterns random movements trace over time.

I’m primarily influenced by Sol Lewitt’s Instructional Art Recipes, and other early generative process artworks. Artists who relied on unconventional procedures such as written instructions and dice throws to make artistic decisions interest me. Twenty-first Century computational power, and sciences evolving understanding of complex systems gives generative artists an unprecedented speed and diverse set of mathematical models to explore algorithms and random processes as a means for art-making.

Download a PDF of my C.V. here.

Elliptical Walker I (top right) was part of a temporary art installation at 60 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada