Eternally Surprising And Self-Generating Artworks

December 6, 2008 1:01 AM

The bespoke generative design system at the heart of Forever will spawn unique audio-visual films everyday, forever.

This winter the V&A John Madejski Garden will come alive with the latest digital commission by Universal Everything, a multidisciplinary design studio founded by creative director Matt Pyke in 2004... Working with a wide range of media from pencils to generative design, Universal Everything is a UK-based studio at the crossover between art and design.

posted by Blazecock Pileon (17 comments total)

Their website is surprisingly hideous. The video is kind of pretty, though, and I eagerly await the day it'll be released as a screensaver.
posted by xchmp at 1:54 AM on December 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Demoscene, we hardly knew ya.

You used to hang out with pirates! And now you're sipping champage with crowned heads and art critics!
posted by davemee at 3:11 AM on December 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

"bespoke"? ok, that's enough to make me not want to go there.
posted by billybobtoo at 3:31 AM on December 6, 2008

This is the kind of thing that will be a big hit with people who like this kind of thing; everyone else will think it's shit and will feel the need to snark about it.

I like this kind of thing.
posted by kcds at 4:24 AM on December 6, 2008

"bespoke"?

The first sequence I got was more like "bespiked".
posted by rokusan at 4:53 AM on December 6, 2008

All the software I write is bespoke. Maybe I should call it that more often.
posted by sidereal at 5:45 AM on December 6, 2008

Metafilter: Bespoke
posted by localroger at 7:13 AM on December 6, 2008

This is cool and bespoke is a cool word.

Also: previously from UE Design.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:47 AM on December 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is a big hit with me.
posted by lizzicide at 8:32 AM on December 6, 2008

Forever is kind of a long time, though.
posted by ottereroticist at 8:52 AM on December 6, 2008

every day
posted by Zambrano at 8:57 AM on December 6, 2008

"Bespoke" used to be cool, until it started hanging out with concepts that are by their very nature bespoke, which has rendered it redundant, non-responsive and seriously depressed.

I mean, come on. When is a generative design system NOT bespoke? When it's already been written by someone else for something else? Faugh.
posted by Aquaman at 9:37 AM on December 6, 2008

The whole "forever" business strikes me as overwrought. Forever? Please. It'll do its thing until people get tired of whatever it does and unplug it. Hardly "forever."

Unless I'm missing the part of this project where its brain is actually installed in a hardened mainframe in an old salt mine, drawing its power from radiothermal generators stuck into a large pile of long-lived isotopes, with maintenance performed by the sentient mutant rats who worship it as a god. If that's the case, I stand corrected.

It is pretty though, in a screensaver-ish way.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:39 AM on December 6, 2008

Musical millipede awesomeness. Amazing. The one for Nov 28 is wonderful. Thanks, Blazecock.
posted by mediareport at 9:47 PM on December 6, 2008

I share the negative reaction to the word "bespoke" but I think this is pretty awesome. These things get eerily more and more like the artist being able to literally put a piece of themselves into the work itself. I'm a software engineer myself but basically tone deaf to any creative stuff... it very much seems to me as though the artist has been able to impart some aspect of his or her own aesthetic sense to the program that generates this.

And I'm certain that I could take it apart and understand how every line of code works and what each one does but I couldn't reverse-engineer and extract and isolate the creativity.
posted by XMLicious at 3:51 AM on December 7, 2008

I find the repeated objection to "bespoke" almost as fascinating as the link material itself, given the description comes from the those who created the site.

It is almost as if Metafilter is itself a self-generating art form, mutating into a clone of YouTube by way of the general decline of intelligence, wit and insight of its comments, of late.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:04 PM on December 7, 2008

It was my guess that "bespoke" came from them and not you, Blazecock, so I meant no criticism of you. I think the negative reaction to it is that appears to be an exact synonym for "customized" that gets used the way a marketing group or PR firm might use it, to attract attention by forcing people to go look up an unfamiliar word.

(But the effort yields no refinement of meaning or more nuanced communication than if they'd just used "customized", and on top of that as Aquaman pointed out it's pretty redundant in this case.)
posted by XMLicious at 3:28 PM on December 7, 2008