Gummy LeWitt #1

Sol LeWitt was an American painter, conceptual artist and minimalist. Sol might write "place 50 points on a wall at random and connect each point with straight lines." The gallery staff or his collaborators would then build the installation, or "structure," on site.

I was drawn to LeWitt for the ease with which his instructions translate to software-based generative art methods and struck by the deliberate gaps between the instructions and the artisan's choices. How thick are the lines? What color are they? What tools are used to make the marks?

When working digitally the software can execute these directions with absolute precision and reliability leaving the human operator free to explore the latent space implied by them. In the context of software-generated art a new part of that space is exposed by the speed at which the possibilities can be realized.

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Gummy LeWitt #1 is a 36 megapixel static image depicting a river of giant gummy worm candies inspired by the original instructions of painter and conceptual artist Sol LeWitt's installations Wall Drawing 1152 and Wall Drawing 1131. The light and shade are produced by path tracing. I hand-sculpted the worms and detailed their surfaces with a hybrid of procedural and hand-painting methods.