Anna Ursyn: Yellow Pages

Artist(s):

Anna Z. Ursyn

Title:

Yellow Pages

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 2005: Threading Time

Creation Year:

2005

Medium:

V/'>X mainframe, FORTRAN 77, Interactive Graphic Library (IGL), COM recorder, photosilkscreen, photolithograph, scanner, and PPC Fragile Balance

Size:

32 inches x 36 inches

Artist Statement:

Acutely aware of order, I try to examine what technological and human worlds have in common. Natural order, revealed randomly and regularly, infuses several levels of both worlds: some determined by humans (through buildings, their windows, even cars parked in lots) and some determined by nature (through trees, branches, and leaves). Natural order guides our understanding of big data sets related to network analysis when we employ physical analogies of the data, render the data graphically, explore them “by eye,” and interact in real time. My task is to juxtapose the regularity of nature with human constructions, both physical and intellectual. The big-city images, for example, combine how humans affect their environment and, at the same time, how a city metaphor reflects the rhythm and organization of big datasets and makes data mining easier. Observers, whether artists or technology experts, perceive such relationships in different lights and from different perspectives and different points of view. Sometimes my computer graphics explorations result in a threedimensional design based on an image of a transformed manikin. When a repetition of human figures depersonified for the purpose of fulfilling the goal is put into an ordered, endless landscape, I have unified the meaning of humans and a landscape using rigid order created with a computer. My work has been inspired by my interest in the common processes of nature in the human and animal worlds, and in their surrounding environment. I transform an image of an animal
into a simple iimage, an iconic object such as a rocking horse or a symbolic picture man or a bird, to present them in dynamic movement as the visible texture of the sky and the ground. In our visual planes of multiple horizons, we can see the same familiar crowd on the floor of ground and the wall of sky, soft and hard inhabitants sharing lots and having common goals, joining tasks, ongoings. Processes in nature and events in technologies inspire my images. Such processes also support my instruction in computer art and graphics, where students learn to create artwork inspired by science and demonstrate what they understand of scientific concepts.