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Grid Index 

(2009) 

by Carsten Nicolai is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. Based upon years of research, Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns.

Grid Index, max-msp, mittig, software

Grid Index is the first comprehensive visual lexicon of patterns and grid systems. It is an essential reference book for designers, visual artists, architects, researchers and mathematicians. From the simplest grids made up entirely of squares to the most complex irregular ones with infinitely unpredictable patterns of growth, the book itself is a work of art.

 

All visual information and forms, whether illustration, graphic design, painting or architecture are comprised of two dimensional grids and patterns, much like the way that computer information is made up of zeroes and ones. Based upon years of research, artist and musician Carsten Nicolai has discovered and unlocked the visual code for visual systems into a systematic equation of grids and patterns.

 

A CD accompanies the book and contains all of the grids and patterns featured in the publication as editable vector graphic data files. This multifunctional and universal tool can be used effortlessly on virtually any platform, operating system and graphics software such as Autodesk and Adobe Illustrator, and applied to every field of visual culture. Grid Index can be used to map out the underlying grids of any single image or form and to create recurring geometrical grids in graphic design.

 

One of the most renowned German contemporary artists, Carsten Nicolai has continued to work at the intersection of art and science. He has exhibited internationally at Documenta X, the Venice Biennale and New National Gallery, Berlin. He has also released albums and staged performances with Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Guggenheim, New York, San Francisco MoMA and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

 

With Grid Index, he has unlocked our world by formulating a universal index of the foundations of visual language. Comparable to Ernst Haeckl's Art Forms of Nature, this book is an indispensable tool for designers and scientists or anyone interested in the basic structure of the visual world.

 

Source: Gestalten

 

 

ISBN-10: 3899552415

ISBN-13: 978-3899552416

 

 

Grid Index, max-msp, mittig, softwareGrid Index, max-msp, mittig, software

Reading

Notations 21 (2009) by Theresa Sauer features illustrated musical scores from more than 100 international composers, all of whom are making amazing breakthroughs in the art of notation. Notations 21 is a celebration of innovations in musical notation, employing an appreciative aesthetic for both the aural and visual beauty of these creations. The musical scores in this edition were created by composers whose creativity could not be confined by the staff and clef of traditional western notation, but whose musical language can communicate with the contemporary audience in a uniquely powerful way. (Notations 21 Project)

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SEE ALSO

Digital Harmony (1980): On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art – John Whitney, Sr. wanted to create a dialog between "the voices of light and tone." All of his early experiments in film and the development of sound techniques lead toward this end. He felt that music was an integral part of the visual experience; the combination had a long history in man's primitive development and was part of the essence of life. His theories On the complementarity of Music and Visual Art were explained in his book, Digital Harmony, published by McGraw-Hill in 1980. (Paradise 2012)

Visual Sound Design (2010) by Reza Ali is a little app he made to help him understand microsounds, oscillators, timing, frequency, low frequency oscillators, polymorphism, sequencing, filtering, time domain effects, such as reverb, chorusing, etc, and distortion effects, such as clipping and more... in real-time in a visual manner, which is how he learns best. (Reza Ali on Vimeo)

META/DATA: A Digital Poetics (2007) by pioneering digital artist Mark Amerika mixes (and remixes) personal memoir, net art theory, fictional narrative, satirical reportage, scholarly history, and network-infused language art. META/DATA is a playful, improvisatory, multitrack digital sampling of Amerika's writing from 1993 to 2005 that tells the early history of a net art world gone wild while simultaneously constructing a parallel poetics of net art that complements Amerika's own artistic practice. (The MIT Press)

Bioacoustic Phenomena (2010) also known as Hydroacoustic Study by Paul Prudence was originally conceived as a live audio-visual performance piece with sound artist Francisco Lopez for a Spatial Sound event organised by Optofonica at the Smart Project Space in Amsterdam, June 2010. The piece was subsequently developed to work with Paul Prudence's own live audio compositions and sound design. Bioacoustic Phenomenon is live generative cinematic exploration of sonically activated biological events, specifically evolving cellular entities that grow in response to sound vibrations. (Transphormetic)

Golan Levin (*1972) is an American new media artist, composer, performer and engineer interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression. Golan Levin's work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into the formal language of interactivity, and of nonverbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. (Golan Levin)