Abstract

Short paper, theme: Futures and Heritages: New strategies for design and architecture
Venue: CCCB, date: June 13

Keywords: ornamentation, play, complexity, craftsmanship, generative art

For centuries, culture has been physically manifested through handcrafted ornaments, in which the craftsman poured meaning and complexity through the process of “play”. Generative art can be seen as the direct descendant of traditional ornamentation, producing digital dynamic ornaments featuring play, complexity and communal actuation.

This study draws parallels between the work of traditional craftsmen and the workflows of digital artists, and acknowledges both of them as cultural actuators and generators of ornamentation. Moreover, the elements of play and visual complexity are considered in the exploration of ornamental forms, as integral practices in both the analogue and digital realm. Play is a natural function, connecting intuition to actions, and specifically in the digital arts, it helps shape different notational systems bound to individual imagination. Visual complexity is explored as an ornamental quality that was forsaken in favor of minimalism and functional design, but nowadays is returning as an integral and desired quality in both traditional and digital ornamentation. It is, as well, a common feature of generative art, a field of digital art, which is interpreted as the augmented continuator of the intellectual and procedural heritage of traditional hand crafting.

• Konstantina Angeletou. (GR). I am a self-employed designer and artist, who has worked as a 2&3D Creative in a variety of design fields: industrial design, architecture, event & UX/UI design. My studies include Architectural Engineering (March) in DUTh, Greece and Computational Methods in Architecture (MSc), in Cardiff University, Wales. The last two years I am a UI Designer for Visual Prototyping and through my artistic project Ludik, I am focused on creative coding and generative art using various motion capture techniques. The idea of play has been a guiding axis in my design practice and academic Theses, as a medium of re-placing communal expression at the center of the design process. Through my multidisciplinary experience I aim to dissolve borders between physical and digital, traditional and modern, technology and art. https://ludik.studio