Harm van den Dorpel - Mutant Garden - preview

HARM VAN DEN DORPEL

MUTANT GARDEN

Mutant Garden Where traditional artistic mediums require the artist to create the work with their own hand, Van den Dorpel rather programs software and trains it by looping continuous feedback through its output in order to produce works with unpredictable aesthetic outcomes. As many people nowadays equate artificial intelligence with neural networks, the artist wants to highlight other moments in this recent history of computation, approaching it as algorithmic archeology. The latest installment in the artist’s inquiry into the history of computation is Mutant Garden, which uses an existing algorithm called ‘Cartesian Genetic Programming’.

Mutant Garden is divided into two parts: a “garden”, where the Mutant Garden software breeds new artworks and where the different material outcomes are shown. The next room forms a “lab”, where Van den Dorpel gives an insight in his artistic process leading up to the final results, as well as showing a timeline of earlier series of works in his larger project of algorithmic archeology.

Decent Fabric, 2021 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle German Etching Paper 122 x 100 cm

Grand Formation, 2021 Exposure on light sensive metallic paper, black aluminium frame 122 x 100 cm

Plural Shim, 2021 Exposure on light sensive metallic paper, black aluminium frame 122 x 100 cm

Odd Motives, 2021 Exposure on light sensive metallic paper, silver aluminium frame 122 x 100 cm

Moksi, 2021 Exposure on light sensive metallic paper, silver aluminium frame 83 x 70 cm

Artist Statement We all know DNA forms the blueprint of life.

Through mutation and crossover, genetic information is passed to our children. How exactly this information that builds our bodies, and organises our trillions of cells, each line in our skin, is encoded in our genes is miraculous. Equating our DNA to a “map” of our body, where there would be a one-toone relation between genes and cells, makes no sense. The genome is limited to contain a relatively small amount of information.

Such a map would exceed the territory.

Instead, it is better to think of our genetic information as a repository of many highly efficient intertwined strategies, recipes, methods – algorithms, if you will – from which the huge amount of cells that compose our bodies are generated, recursively. These instructions in our DNA are parsed and executed, over and over again, based on local conditions: if this, then do that, or else do this. Genetic information could be considered as a compressed collection of computer programmes, from which life emerges.

It is my conviction that this tension between relative simplicity of computational rules, but enormous complexity in outcome, holds the key to understanding life, and by extension, our aesthetic appreciation of it. We are attracted to visual systems which are to some extent complex, novel, tantalising, yet at the same time contain familiar, repeating elements. Difference and variation, surprise and expectation, have provided essential building blocks in the history of human expression.

To that end, I have developed evolutionary algorithms to research and optimise this trade off. But just as mutations in biology often result in death of specimens, mutations in software often result in programmes that get stuck in an infinite loop: the notorious blue screen of death or endless rainbow spinner on MacOS. My engineering challenge was to devise an environment where I could freely let programmes mutate without crippling them. To achieve this, I turned to an existing algorithm called

Cartesian Genetic Programming, invented

by Julian F. Miller and Peter Thomson in 1997 (see also the interview with Julian) to come to the Mutant Garden software.

In the “Autobreeder” on display in the main room (the “garden”) specimens undergo mutation, and siblings are evaluated based on measuring their visual complexity versus cost of computation. Complex compositions that were relatively quick to generate are favoured over simple images that took disproportionate effort. I used the outputs of this algorithm as input for my own aesthetic wetware: I curated, and optimised the highly complex compositions, emphasised desired traits in a painterly, subjective, and labour intensive process.

Some of these works are materialised as digital exposures on photographic paper (lightjet), others are printed on archival paper using UltraChrome inks. These are installed alongside the Autobreeder.

In the smaller room (the “lab”), an additional software work is installed which visualises how the genetic code is formatted as a twodimensional network, and how this is parsed to generate the layered visual compositions.

On one wall, as a timeline of my larger project of algorithmic archaeology, from each iteration, one work is installed, highlighting my own artistic practice as a genealogy as well.

To conclude, a series of light emitting tablets connect the various algorithms, series, works by myself, by other contemporary artists, and historical art movements.

These help me define my activities in a broader artistic and historical frame, and appreciate associations in their own right.

Mutant Garden Autobreeder, 2021 Software Infinite duration, dimensions variable

Zwour, 2021 Exposure on light sensive metallic paper 100 x 100 cm

Multi Dimensional Zoom, 2019 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle paper 50 x 50 cm

Crystallophobia, 2020 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle Paper 70 x 70 cm

Run Too, 2019 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle Paper 100 x 100 cm

Cussos Unfence Thermographers, 2018 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle Paper 100 x 100 cm

Unheard Estimator, 2019 UltraChrome HD print on Hahnemühle Paper 80 x 64 cm

Big Pablo Ferenc Zatlas, 2021 UltraChrome print on CNC perforated German Hahnemühle Paper 100 x 100 cm

Triddle, 2020 Lightjet exposure on aluminium 60 x 60 cm

Mutant Garden Tracer, 2021 Software Infinite duration, dimensions variable

Associative Displa Light 47.5 × 6

ay (Painting), 2020 htbox 64.5 cm

Associative Display (Recursion), 2020 Lightbox 47.5 × 64.5 cm

Associative Display (Organisms), 2020 Lightbox 47.5 × 64.5 cm

Harm van den Dorpel Harm van den Dorpel’s broad practice includes sculpture, installation, works on paper, computer generated graphics and software. Rooted in the conceptual heritage of net.art, Van den Dorpel’s works often simulate neural networks. The role of technology in his works is a means to an end: a tool to increase the understanding of our experience. “I seek to produce works that explore not only the technological hardware we use in our daily lives, but how we use it, the modalities of interface that are created, enabled, facilitated and restricted by the advance of technology.”

Harm van den Dorpel (1981, the Netherlands) lives and works in Berlin.

Selected (group) exhibitions include the New Museum in New York, MoMa PS1 in New York, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, ZKM Karlsruhe, and the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam. In 2015, Van den Dorpel started Left Gallery, an online gallery that commissions, produces, and sells downloadable files.

His first solo exhibition at Upstream Gallery was Pattern and Presence (2018). www.harmvandendorpel.com

Kloveniersburgwal 95 1011 KB Amsterdam t. +31 (0)20 4284284 e. info@upstreamgallery.nl