[ Generative ]
Perry, Mary, and Lars
Lars Wander
Presented by Verse and curated by Toni Marinara, the artist's debut solo show, Perry, Mary, and Lars displayed a wide range of outputs that explored the artist's humble yet wonderfully complex beginnings.
"My inspiration for the series came from the work of Mark Lovejoy, who creates and photographs beautiful mixtures of printing inks. At the same time, my blobs’ hard edges and uniform fills embrace a “digital” aesthetic, and are clearly not perfect renditions of ink mixtures. The use of a computer in creating artwork can be incredibly freeing, it’s a medium with unlimited potential for exploration, and I want my work to reflect that. If you’re going to emulate reality, why not break the rules a little?
On another level, my approach to the series was heavily influenced by the works of Zancan and qubibi who have created these wonderful, rich, and deeply varied generative systems. Starting from scratch on the p5.js web editor can be refreshing, but it makes it difficult to capture an identifiable style for yourself. This series will have 19 pieces, each with randomly arranged and perturbed blobs of paint. However, the underlying generative system I’ve created in service of this series has far more potential, and these 19 pieces are in a sense a debut of that."
– Lars Wander
About The Artist
Lars Wander is a computer artist and programmer who exclusively creates art using code. His creative process involves spending significant time contemplating and sketching ideas for intriguing software systems. He establishes a set of rules that serve as the sole human input in generating each piece. By evaluating these rules, the machine generates unique and unpredictable outcomes. In Wander's creative approach, he emphasizes the importance of simple tools and often designs and constructs his own. He believes that the tools he uses greatly influence the final result of his artwork. Consequently, producing and maintaining his own tools is a source of joy for Lars. He employs vanilla Javascript and WebGL2 to generate his artwork. To maintain simplicity, Lars uses a local HTTP server to serve unbundled Javascript and incorporate shared and developed libraries across projects. He favors working on Linux due to its programmer-friendly environment. For plotter projects, Wander initially used Python but later switched to Julia, a high-performance language developed at MIT for scientific computing. This transition was necessary to address performance issues while ensuring ease of development. Despite Lars Wander's complete control over his creative process, he occasionally encounters moments where the computer's actions surprise him, almost magically. As an artist, he strives to capture these moments of unexpected beauty through algorithmic art.
