Individuals

Dr Simon Ingram

Senior Lecturer - Elam School of FIne Art, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries -  The University of Auckland

Telephone:	+64 9 3737599 ext 89997
Address:	Main Fine Arts Building Building 431, Level 1 The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand s.ingram@auckland.ac.nz

Research Interests:

Visual Arts and Media

painting

Publications:

Academic qualifications and professional associations

BFA UoA., Trans Cert, UoA., PGDip, U Syd., MA, UW.Syd., DocFA, UoA

Teaching and research interests

* Experimental painting
* Early computer art
* Machines
* Self-organising systems
* Radio astronomy
* Data visualisation

Current research

The modernist, autonomous, self-made artwork is interpreted in relation to painting as a constructional and computationally based self organising system. Three distinct lines of work are articulated: machines made from Lego robotics and generic constructional materials that paint autonomously in oil paint with a brush; paintings made by hand that use artificial life systems as a method to govern composition and decision making; and video work related to the production of self-making painting machines. Divergent strands of knowledge (artificial life, painting, theory, robotics, software) are drawn together to re-stage and reinvent painting as a critical, contemporary project that explores painting’s conceptual signification while remaining resolutely fabricational.

With the machines, custom built hardware, software and off-the shelf Lego robotic components combine to make self-making paintings. These expose hand-made painterly gesture to a model of painting that is mechanistic and electronic but which maintains dialogue with certain gritty, material and traditional givens in the practice of painting such as makerly thickness, gesture and support.

Drunken Walk Machine, shown in the exhibition Minus Space at PS1/MoMA (New York, 2008), occupied The Boiler Room as studio to paint a series of compositions generated on-the-fly by a random walk algorithm. Subsequent machines, such as those at the Kunstverein Medienturm (Graz, 2009) and CCNOA (Brussels, 2010) have developed the implication of self-organising systems in the context of non-objective painting and of the exhibition space as studio. See: http://www.youtube.com/user/paintingthatthinks

Bibliographies / Databases:

http://www.youtube.com/paintingthatthinks

http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/simpleSearch.jsp

http://www.chartwell.org.nz

http://dunedin.art.museum/exhibitions.asp

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal/

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/about/news/articles/2007/04/ingram.cfm

http://www.minusspace.com/artists.htm

http://www.canarygallery.com/120705.htm

http://www.satellitesh.com

http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2006/07/16/notes-from-computational-aesthetics-at-aaai/"

http://www.mop.org.au/archive/040915.html