While working on the development of my portfolio, I noticed something interesting between the cellular automata research and the printmaking I have done. Cellular Automata focuses on feed and decay rates to produce a system of organizing cells and functions. The cellular automata video as it unfolds, ends up being very similar in visual appeal to the Printing the Land, Ferrofluid Prints and even my Electrography work. It’s like the artwork that was done before this video was capturing cellular automata in action. 

Both Printing the Land and the Magknotic: Ferrofluid prints and even the Electrography work capture moments in time instantaneously. Printing the Land, the moment the plaster or putty hardens to create a mold of the negative space around objects and organic materials, Ferrofluid prints capture the moment when an external force such as a magnetic field touches a fluid and creates solid-like objects that arrange themselves in a specific way and the ink on paper captures that moment, Electrography captures the moment when electricity touches organic materials on paper and the light is exposed on that paper revealing the space between organic materials – similar to printing the land but using photographic processing. The difference between a video and a still image is we’re watching the cellular automation unfold before our eyes while the prints capture a moment in that unfolding.

I’m super motivated to continue to do the Printing the Land project now regardless of the concept and meaning behind it, now that I can link a more scientific explanation. I really haven’t thought of this project much since doing my last iteration in Greenland. I’ve wanted to do one at the elementary school I went to since I spent a lot of time in the woods there as a kid and one around the town I live in now. 

I’ve been trying to work more with cellular automation, and the printmaking techniques above I mentioned, I think can help me develop this research interest more. Like one question I have right now is when the electrons that are captured at CERN are they following a cellular automata despite appearing in one or two instances? 

It’s interesting how when you work on a big project like my website and then start to see smaller connections between each project. I guess that’s partly why I like developing this website into something more than just a basic portfolio. Just putting work up on line I personally feel like it looses some of the depth rather than seeing it in person or articulating it more through text, marketing and photos and images. 

However, the goal of the ABBA research interest (space in-between) is to explain how organic objects and materials form at an atomic/subatomic level. But maybe it’s an instance of AASB (As above, so below) as well?