“They don’t know what you’re doing, Babe, it must be art.”
– Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, U2
Algorithmic Space | The City in Art
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A
Don Relyea’s Cityscape with Helipads and Ladders (2011) uses an algorithm based on the Hilbert space filling curve, discovered by mathematician David Hilbert. The version of Relyea’s program subdivides spaces within the total space to be filled and runs the algorithm to fill the smaller spaces separately. Each smaller space is centered on a point on the curve causing the smaller renderings to intersect the larger one in interesting ways. The program recursively draws rectangles along the curve. At certain times during the execution, it draws larger concentric rectangles and connects special points with trailed concentric rectangles (Source: www.donrelyea.com).
I am not even going to pretend to understand the mathematics of what Relyea is describing, except in only the vaguest sense. I’m sure Dr. Nick “Sheep” Dalton and Dr. Ruth Conroy Dalton would understand the mathematics of Relyea’s generative algorithm, and I will get them to explain it to me the next time I see them. For those interested in the mathematics of the algorithm, there is more information available here. However, purely in terms of art, Relyea’s generative algorithm appears to capture something of the “organized complexity” of the city, which is, no doubt, why Relyea decided to appropriately title his computer-generated art series as “cityscapes”. In addition to this generative complexity, Relyea’s prints also capture something of the repetitiveness of city space, which Relyea varies through his use of color (see the entire series to date here). It is suggestive there are more practical applications for his generative algorithm in urban modeling and science, beyond that of generating complex shapes for artistic reasons. However, based purely on artistic terms, the result is a compelling abstract image of repetitive complexity.
About Don Relyea
Don Relyea graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1992, where he was a print making major and information systems major and a merit scholarship student. He lives and works in Dallas Texas USA with his wife and three kids. Upon graduation, Relyea immersed himself in the multimedia software industry producing video and interactive CD content and eventually games for publishers and clients. In the multimedia industry, he developed a love for programming graphics on computers and now produces art in several media both traditional and digital. Relyea focuses in the area of computational art. He writes his own custom art software in C++ and Open GL. Many of the programming techniques Relyea learned in game development he now employs with his art, primarily producing prints and video art. He often weaves cultural, social and political dimensions into his work. Nature and mathematical forms are also common subjects. His print and video work have been in exhibited in galleries and juried exhibitions all over the United States. Recently, Relyea’s video art has been installed outdoors in curated/juried shows in Oslo, Norway, The Hague, the Digital Graffiti Festival at Alys Beach Florida, W hotel in Seoul Korea and International Free Exchange Zone in Incheon Korea (Source: www.donrelyea.com).
The City in Art is a series by The Outlaw Urbanist. The purpose is to present and discuss artistic depictions of the city that can help us, as professionals, learn to better see the city in ways that are invisible to others. Before the 20th century, most artistic representations of the city broadly fell into, more or less, three categories: literalism, pastoral romanticism, and impressionism, or some variation thereof. Generally, these artistic representations of the city lack a certain amount of substantive interest for the modern world. The City in Art series places particular emphasis on art and photography from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.
Like Libya before it, Jihadists have infiltrated the pro-democracy rebellion in Syria while Hezbollah fighters enter the country in support of the tyrannical government of Bashar al-Assad. In essence, this rebellion now pits one model of tyranny against another with the democratic elements poised to be sidelined/eliminated once their immediate usefulness against the Assad government is over. Jihadists used the grassroots, pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring as a springboard to political power in Egypt. Now Islamic-rooted Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s riot police used tear gas and pressurized water hoses in a dawn raid on Friday against a peaceful sit-in to prevent the uprooting of trees at a local park. The initial protest has expanded beyond urban renewal issues to demonstrations against new laws recently enacted that restrict the sale and advertising of alcohol and public displays of affection (i.e. kissing). The implications for the West of ‘losing Turkey’ (which already has a Jihadist-tainted government) are profound.
Our policy circles around the strategic signpost “to keep the oil flowing” while veering back and forth between (often mistaken) tactical assessments about what is easy (i.e. Libya, intervene; Afghanistan, surge) or what is hard (i.e. Syria, stay out of it; Iraq; get out), which is to say there is no coherent policy at all. This is no way for a “great” county and civilization (which we aspire to and often claim on behalf of the United States and Western Europe) to conduct its affairs. Given these conditions, it should not be a surprise to anyone the “huddle masses yearning to breathe free” on the Arab streets are befuddled and frustrated by the incoherent policies of the United States and Western Europe. After 9/11, the United States and Western Europe made a mistake. It was an honest mistake because it was born of anger but a mistake nonetheless. We thought Al-Qaeda’s attack was about us. It was not, it was about power. Subsequent events in the Middle East have demonstrated the agenda of the Jihadists is to achieve political power, oppress liberal-minded citizens and thought (such as Christianity), and accumulate power for its own sake. In his second augural address, George W. Bush attempted to frame the current threat on more solid footing as a struggle against tyranny, liberty versus oppression, and the dreams of freedom for the many in opposition to the pursuit of power by a few.
A new policy should include containment. We must develop a strategy for the Middle East to halt the expansion of Islamo-Fascism, which includes modernizing (perhaps even expanding) our nuclear deterrent and reconstituting the doctrine of having the military capacity to fight two wars simultaneously. As part of this containment strategy, we will have to recognize and accept we may lose some countries (like Egypt) along the way but, in the modern era of globalization, mass communications, and the internet, these are more likely to be temporary situations. A similar transition as witnessed during the Cold War is likely to occur at a much more rapid rate (taking years instead of decades). Finally, we must actively engage in destabilizing these tyrannical regimes by any means necessary, including clandestine activities, expanded intelligence gathering ‘on the ground’, Wi-Fi American Free (a modern adaption of the Radio Free Europe concept) and filtering financial support to grassroots democratic movements. Our view should be on the end game, not the distractions of the moment. And our end game should always be to grow the “tree of liberty” for all, lest we condemn more than 300 million people to the darkness.
About Kathleen Patrick
From this emerges meaning and function, a city of light and sound, movement and life, each particular in their own way but also a simulacrum of all that has come before and will arrive again. There is power in the disorder of the city and a power of magnitude to be discovered in its orderly manifestation. Neither is greater than the other nor the sum of the parts. Within this (dis)order we live and function, day to day, year to year. We shape and are shaped by the space of the city, we utilize its strategic provisions for seeing, going, and being and its infinite redundancies to pause, understand, reflect, perhaps even decide. The light we shine on the city reflects upon ourselves and, in seeking to better understand the city, we learn to incrementally know ourselves. The city is both static in the moment and dynamic across the seconds. It can be understood all at once but its parts in isolation are – often so – the genesis of intellectual aberration. The organism grows but the machine still operates and we are befuddled. The city is at once process and product, the thing already made and in the process of becoming, the Father seeding the land, the Mother birthing the child, and the child being born, a Trinity upon itself. However, this is not a Mystery of faith but a failure of understanding. We must conjecture, we must believe, we must hypothesize, and we must dissect and reassemble if we hope to intervene with wisdom in the space of the city. Let us delve into Beingness of the city to better understand its nature with hope and expectation instead of fear and trepidation. It is life revealed.