Cousin Sirko

Cousin Sirko was inspired by a series of OP Art prints done by Victor Vasarely, called Tlinko. (c. 1956) Vasarely died in 1997 in the early days of computer art. I'm sure he would have embraced this medium. This is the seventh in a series of Vasarely inspired Generative Art pieces I am offering.

I became interested in Victor Vasarely's graphic artworks while I was in art school. As I struggled to learn computer graphics I wondered how do I write a program to produce imagery with a similar aesthetic? I call the process of creating algorithms inspired by other artists: "Art"ificial Intelligence.

Cousin Sirko is a black and white composition. It is drawn either with black figures on a white background or vice versa. Its in an optical piece that starts out as a regular field of squares but random smaller areas of squares within the frame are transformed. Transformations to these smaller areas can be rotation, skew, and squash.

The visual phenomena represented here is called differences against a background. My understanding is that in our evolution as humans, when we were all hunters, we learned to see slight differences in a large background such as a forest canopy, grassland or desert. For example, a squirrel moving in the trees or a rabbit through a field of grass. I'm sure there is some psychological term for this but I'll leave that for you to investigate.

Again, there are many Gestalt interactions within this piece. The most prominent being the figure-ground relationship. As well areas of unifying structure.

By the way my father's sister Juby married George Sirko. As a result I have three cousins named Sirko: Randy, Mary and Daniel.

Dr. Bill Generative Art OG @ drbillkolomyjec.com