NOW BECOMES THEN
A forty page, large format algorithmic broadsheet publication to mark twenty five years of brendandawes.com
Since 2000 brendandawes.com has been my corner of the web where I share my work, code, process and observations to the outside world. It's a place of experimentation and place which I own and control without the external interference of corporate algorithms or the pressures of social media.
This publication is a celebration of that space, hi-lighting some of the work I've created over the years.
Rather than put together a series of images from each project, I instead created visual souvenirs born from the work itself. To that aim, a procedural system takes the title of each project and uses that alphanumeric data to create a unique digital sculpture – essentially a three dimensional fingerprint for each project. I always think of the things I create as having a form – a shape that might exist in the physical world – so this seemed a fitting approach to take.
For the large body of the text I again wanted to create something new rather than simply put the title of each project. So using a locally run LLM I gave it the text from each project and asked it to write a Haiku for each. A little bit of machine-made poetry if you will.
Finally, I created a compositing system which took these elements – the procedurally made sculptures, the machine generated Haiku's together with the actual project text and other data – via an API I built from my website – and outputted a series of images. Each time the system was run it would generate new compositions. The result is the publication you are now holding.
Whilst this publication documents my work, it's also a celebration of the web and the importance of not only documenting and sharing your work, but owning the space in which you do it. It's about interoperability – how one thing can freely work with another thing to create unusual combinations, to drive new ideas and new ways of expressing those ideas. It is also about the freedom to experiment, to play and to create.
Edition of 100 signed and numbered.
----
PFU-025
----
Size: 380mm x 578mm (Broadsheet), 40 pages
Materials: 55gsm paper endorse folded, Software: Houdini, Touch Designer, Processing, Ollama, Kirby, PHP, Python . Typeface: Warbler and Lab DJR Basic, both by David Jonathan Ross