About the artist
Francois Grobler is a self-taught “algorithmic” (also called “algoristic”) artist based in Perth Western Australia. Although he has always had a healthy appreciation of various forms and expressions of art, he has never actually received any official artistic education or training.
That’s if by “official training” you mean studying artistic techniques or the history of art at a university or training colleague. If on the other hand you include under being “trained” as having being taught and gradually having developed the ability to identify or recognise PATTERNS and STRUCTURE in data and phenomena, then he has had an extensive background being educated in geology, engineering, mineral economics and applied mathematics. Francois has a special interest in non-linear, random and chaotic systems and patterns, which often materialises in his art.
Francois has a keen eye for identifying and appreciating the patters in natural environments such as geological formations, geography, biology, microbiology but also manmade such as share prices, economics and human behaviour. He similarly appreciates the surprising patterns and structures often to be found in the auditory repertoire (e.g. classical music, jazz and symphonic metal) as well as the olfactory and gustatory offerings (e.g. good food, wine and a breath of fresh forest air).
About his work – I’ll give you 5 seconds before you’ll stifle the first yawn. Be warned...
Francois generates digital art images through a set of mathematical formulas which produce results from a composite multi-dimensional function.
The composite function includes mathematical operators such as sines, tangents, powers and logarithms and involves recursive feedback (the same principle used in the generation of fractals). The function takes amongst various other inputs values for pre-defined ranges in each of the x and y dimensions and produces a final value (z) as the result for each x, y coordinate (the pixel position). The result (z) is converted to one of a finite set of numbers between 0 and 9 using a second algorithm to which specific colours are then allocated using a third algorithm.
Various colouring schemes are used (currently 30 variations) for instance black & white, warm colours, cold colours, multicolour etc. The composite function includes complex components which lead to the results from the algorithms being non-linear and often showing chaotic or random characteristics.
Art as data transfer…
Without wanting to strip art of its mystery or beauty, visual art can be seen as a form of data or information transfer where the artist communicates with the viewer via the visual senses a certain idea or concept. The viewer interprets the information received in a certain way which is very personal and subjective. That is why beauty or art for that matter is often said to be “…in the eye of the beholder…”
Patterns and structures and their effect on humans
The interesting thing about patterns and the way humans perceive them or are affected by them is that repetitive or very symmetric patterns are often perceived as boring, not really captivating the attention or imagination. On the other extreme of the spectrum, total randomness without structure (as exemplified by a static noise map) is also dismissed as not interesting. It seems that in the space in between perfect symmetry and total randomness is where we are most captivated by the patterns and forms that we perceive from art but also from nature and other forms of information input (e.g. audio –music or olfactory – food).
It’s as if we are comforted (to the point of boredom) by symmetry, but challenged and provoked (to the point of being totally intimidated) by randomness and chaos, but where there is a mixture of both (symmetry and randomness) is where we are the most stimulated.
