CODED: Digital Art that Defies Definition
CODED: Digital Art that Defies Definition was a digital art exhibition which allowed visitors to interact with a spectacular, coded environment that reacted to noise, movement, and touch. You could watch as you influenced how shapes changed and grew into new patterns and fantastical creatures. International artist Marpi makes art from the language of coding and computers. Inspired by the life and legacy of 19th century Lincolnshire mathematician, George Boole, this exhibition was brought together to explore what happens when code is set free. Throughout his work with musicians, artists, and performers, Marpi explores the visual and interactive possibilities of organic patterns found in machine codes. He challenges computer structures and explores how art made with code can copy organic forms. A multi-screen installation of Binary Garden (created first in 2017 and adapted here for a unique presentation at Lincoln Museum) merged algorithms, touchscreen, and audio interaction, from gallery based, local and remote audiences into a dazzling interactive artwork. Creature-based works from Marpi’s Island Series (begun in 2021) grow, change, and respond to human movement and interaction. Marpi Studio makes work inspired by the complexities of the natural world and the possibilities of alternate futures. Whether self-directed or commissioned, our artworks for public, private, and digital space bring environments, entities, and behaviours into being with code. We ask our audiences to co-create with us, transforming their interactions into avatars, gestures, and physics that shape the work in playful and unexpected ways. Founded in San Francisco in 2019 by Marpi, a creative technologist and artist, Marpi Studio is now based in the Bay Area, California. This exhibition was produced in collaboration between Lincoln Museum and Lumen Art Projects. Images by Reece Straw