How to Design a Generating Event. I would like to take advantage of the fact that being in Ravenna for the XX Generative Art event and Ravenna is the capital of the mosaic, to make some considerations on my approach to generative art. As the mosaic involves, as parallel fields, the small scale of each tile and the large scale of the image, so my generative approach works simultaneously on the small and the large scale. This parallelism and strong correlation between detail and total space have always been one of my creative matrices, even in my oil paintings of the 1960s/1980s.

Fig 1,2. C.Soddu 1986. Two oil paintings, NYC, the Guggenheim Museum (1) and Broadway crossing 5th ave (2). The like-mosaic structure and the curved space representation is explicit and it is a constant of my work.

The Van Gogh room. C.Soddu 1988. The selfportrait of Van Gogh is winking... The relationship between small scale and total system is clear and the approach is like mosaic.

Since 1985, in my generative works, the progressive transformations of the basic elements and the spatial evolution of the whole space have always been intimately connected and were made through the same algorithms that mirrored my vision of architecture.
It was therefore easy to perform, for this twentieth Generative Art meeting in Ravenna, the generation of mosaicarchitectures able to focus a possibility to reinforce Ravenna's in-process identity with this strong relationship between mosaic, architecture and the urban space.
These generated architectures are, however, a three-dimensional mosaic. Every single tile is a three-dimensional event able to spatially reflect the light becoming an integral part of the total architectural image. This interchange between 3D events at small and large scale lights up a recognizable identity and, in my intentions, is strongly representative of futuring Ravenna identity.

Imaginary Mirror
The generative approach to the Ravenna Identity is performed by generating several Mosaic-Architectures with the reference of mosaic structure and putting them in the Ravenna environment using a mirror for enhancing the structure of variations. Each generated scenario exists also because is one of possible variations, as in Nature, but in the same time, it is unique, un-repeatable and, mirroring the mosaic artworks, really complex and appreciable at different scales.









Ravenna is a complex city where the sea presence and the historical centre are two different faces of the same feeling. The generated Mosaic-Architectures try to make a link between these two faces of its Identity, enhancing the unique and peculiar feeling of this city.

Curved not-Euclidean representation of “Mosaic Gallery” generated space. C.Soddu

References

Websites:
www.generativedesign.com
www.futuringpast.com
www.generativeart.com

books:

Celestino Soddu, Citta’ Aleatorie, Masson Publisher, Milan 1989.
Celestino Soddu, L’Immagine non Euclidea, Gangemi Publisher, Roma 1986.
Celestino Soddu, Enrica Colabella, “Il progetto di morfogenesi, Leonardo 1992
Celestino Soddu, Milan Visionary Variations, Gangemi Publisher, Roma 2005.

All books are for free download at www.artscience-ebookshop.com