Continuing their use of black and white dice, which began with ‘Hierophany’ in 2013 and continued in 2016 with ‘A New Kind of Fate’, ‘Calculating the Universe’ is a series of images each constructed from thousands of black and white dice. The die reenact a very simple binary computer program or algorithm, typically used to model complex systems
The dice are dispersed starting from a central axis proceeding upwards and downwards, and laid, line by line, through discrete time steps according to a set of rules and based on the states of neighbouring cells – simple rules that govern the replication, organisation or destruction of life-like patterns.
Historically dice were rolled to determine fate, while algorithms, as an expression of a rapid technological and societal change, have become a powerful tool to both simulate and predict our everyday reality.
Press:
Creative Applications, Greg J. Smith, ‘Trickle Down Aesthetics’, February 2017