Opposing forces: VICKIE VAINIONPÄÄ charts the gap between experience and human perception
She said: “When I was studying in college, I was really focused on reconciling what I saw as two opposing forces: humans (organic and natural) and machines (rigid and unnatural). However, over time, I slowly came to realize that they were not actually as opposed to each other as I had imagined, so I began to recognize more formal and conceptual connections, adopting a more holistic view. I began studying 3D Modeling and learning how to code, to find new forms, things that “click”. That’s how I stumbled upon the concept of generating bezier curves. I learned a few tricks about modeling hair accurately, for example, so that your character would have slightly different shapes and curves. So the solution was to randomize the curvature of the strands. I immediately realized it was a drawing tool, a way to generate a single unique stroke.”
Much of Vainionpää’s art begins with generating computer programs. It’s easy for us laymen to hear or read something similar and assume it means something like artificial intelligence (the artist gave the author a gentle correction on this topic). However, Vainionpää’s work does not use any artificial intelligence or machine learning.
…That’s the beauty of being an artist. Follow your interests and pull Threads and a slow but sure path It became clear. “
An important difference here is what is generated. Artificial intelligence tools like Midjourney and Dall-E tap into vast stores of information to find what you want from prompts. However, generative art in Vainionpää’s approach uses only the information she provides. “The beauty of generative art is that artists have a deep understanding and familiarity with their program and its inputs. The creative control involved is much greater, resulting in less ‘sloppiness,'” she said.
The early works in her “Soft Body Kinetics” series were, in her words, “based on accident.” Like her description of how to convincingly generate digital hair, these pieces use a custom plug-in for Cinema4D to randomly generate curves. The plug-in is called VVV, a mashup of her own initials and that of her partner, slash data scientist Harry Vallianos.
Some of her recent works include the Gaze series. It uses VVVi (the next iteration of VVV) to import raw data collected from the eye-tracking glasses Vainionpää wore while viewing his favorite and famous works of art. VVVi puts this data into Cinema4D to generate curves based on how the artist interacts with the artwork.
Her latest works, such as “Dreams” and “The Painter’s Studio,” take this process to scale. The two paintings collected “gaze data” from more than a hundred people using VVVi and webcams. The pieces needed a new look to display the increased data, so their worm form became sparse. The result is smoother and a greater anemic feel to curves and dives.
Vainionpää said: “While there are always surprising results that inevitably emerge, generative artists fundamentally control the parameters because we are the authors of the system that creates the work. Although the system can be considered autonomous, the artist still plays an important role in its creation and definition, but also in selecting the results and realizing the work in its final form.”
She is constantly looking for the next direction to work. From a YouTube video about generating digital hair, to recruiting dozens of volunteers to create data for her work, to developing and adapting custom systems to interpret and reinterpret data into visual form—she has an uncanny ability to innovate, create, and delve deeper into research.
Ultimately, her work is about connection. Linking humanity to creation in both directions—the generative processes of evolution and birth that lead to the birth of each of us, and the generative processes of inquiry and discovery that lead to the creation of machines that create. She asks us to be curious, hopeful and curious about the world around us. The world we create. Create our world. The world we have, the world we want to see.
In her words, as she reflects on the implications of an article on her website, “…the gap between experience and perception, the ultimate interconnectedness of all things, the distinction (or lack thereof) between the natural and the unnatural, and a certain optimism needed to create an authentic, inspired future.*
This article appears in Issue 71 of High Fructose. Get a print version of the full issue here.
