By Augusta Statz
Timothy Jackson is a professor of art history who also specializes in new media and digital art. In his exhibit that is being featured at the S.P.A.C.E. center in conjunction with the Telfair Museum’s PULSE: Art and Technology Festival until Jan. 28, “Structures of Chaos,” Jackson created drawings generated by machines of his creation.
Jackson has been working with similar art systems for 20 years. He explained his interest in chaos that originally inspired him to create the art making machines.
“My interest in chaos theory which led to these works emerged through my development of increasingly complex art systems. These systems were generative works with dynamic behaviors that became impossible to predict. In Hesiod’s “Theogony,” Chaos is described as the original dark void from which everything else appeared, including the other Greek gods. I was interested in each drawing becoming a physical rumination upon such a creation myth, with these pathetic technological characters [drawing robots] scratching away, and I hope inspiring some sense of wonder in the minds of the viewer of the outcomes of these actions. In this manner, I consider each blank piece of paper as a metaphoric chaotic ground upon which something comes into being, manifesting its inherent systemic structure by design, as generated from conditions initiated by the artist/technologist.”
The machines can create art using several different mediums including colored pencil, graphite, charcoal, and markers. The medium being used at the time is attached to the machine, which “affects the movement in these art systems, which in turn provides structure to the chaos,” said Jackson.
