Sergio Albiac

The illusion of Reality

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The illusion of Reality

Ongoing generative and procedural series of portraits. Filtered reality.

Always and forever

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Always and forever

Dissolved memories of the future. Ongoing generative portrait series.

New Works. October 2012

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0200

New Works. October 2012

Some of the artworks that were at display in my solo exhibition “Divided Experiences”, showing giclée prints and interactive installation at “El Bigote del Sr. Smith“ gallery, Barcelona.

From October 6th to November 10th (2012)

Great artists self-portraits

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Great artists self-portraits

Generative collage portraits of great poets and classical composers, using bits and pieces of their manuscripts, music sheets and calligraphic signatures

Portraits for Adobe CS6

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Portraits for Adobe CS6

Commissioned generative portraits, in collaboration with Tolleson Design, for the CS6 release of the Adobe Creative Suite. Artwork for Flash Professional and InDesign.

Credits:

Adobe Flash Professional CS6 “Hero” portrait - Sergio Albiac: Generative Illustration; Tolleson: Creative Direction
Adobe InDesign CS6 “Hero” portrait - Sergio Albiac: Generative Illustration; Tolleson: Creative Direction and Illustration
All images, copyright by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Published here with permission

Laws of attractor

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Laws of attractor

Programmed emotional responses to face recognition. Generative series of portraits using a mixture of generative collage, digital inks and accidental glitches. A coded revision of traditional techniques.

Videorative Portrait of Randall Okita

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Videorative Portrait of Randall Okita

What is a truly realistic portrait? This question inspired a project about going beyond physical appearances and attempting to render the interior world of a human being, through memories, emotions, relationships and personal story. All of it organized around a portrait painting metaphor: brushes loaded with meanings instead of paint would render a portrait using my “generative video painting” techniques.
Painting a Videorative portrait (a generative, narrative and interactive video portrait) starts with collecting personal videos of the person portrayed, tagged by him/her with relevant concepts and descriptions. Then, using a custom tool, the artist “paints with meanings” and generates a video portrait, subtitled with generative personal narratives. In the interactive installation version of the work, the viewer can “navigate” through the subject’s mind, opening his/her video memories, accessing their thoughts and revealing hidden connections between the meanings, using online access to Wikipedia to infer related emotional states. These “data visualization” create new and unexpected interpretations of the portrait.
The subject portrayed can add more video memories, tags and descriptions to “increase the likeness” of the portrait over time, all his/her life, creating a never-ending collection of personal documentaries.
Videorative portraits are the result of my experiments to build a more “realistic” contemporary portrait of the physical and the psychological. A comment on the art of portrait painting. A visual metaphor of the memory, heavily distorted, chaotic, fragmented, obsessively replayed. A window to the subject’s personal experience and intimate world. A picture of memories. A map of emotions.

My immense gratitude to filmmaker Randall Okita for accepting the challenge of exposing himself in these portraits.

Credits:
All video sources, by Randall Okita.
Music: “I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor”, by Chris Zabriskie.

Selected exhibitions and honors:
- 2012: Alpha-ville 2012 Future of Moving Image Award - Finalist. London, UK
- 2012: 5th annual Imagine Science Film Festival.New York, USA
- 2012: Imagine Science Dublin Festival. Dublin, Ireland
- 2012: TheLeonardo Museum. Salt Lake City, USA
- 2011: Selected Vimeo Staff Pick

Divided Personality

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Divided Personality

Ongoing painting series. This portrait painting series explores symbolically the contradictions, conflicting desires, mindset revisions and the permanent crisis of a technological world. The paintings are the result of my generative sketching process.

Content is Queen

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Content is Queen

"Content is Queen" is a video art series of generative portraits that reflects on the foundations of democracy and the resilient nature of the structures of power. At the same time, it is a paradoxical dialogue and strange marriage between the banal and the utterly majestic: to create the series, the most popular (in a truly democratic sense) internet videos of a given moment are used as the input of a generative process that "paints" with action the portrait of the Queen.
On a technical level, this piece is a result of my research in breaking the limitations of the static image in a contemporary revision of the tradition of painting. The portraits are created using an innovative generative technique that I have developed called "generative video painting". It differs from previous attempts of video collage (like the techniques developed by David Hockney, mixing simultaneous points of view of an action) or video mosaic (where still images are represented by whole videos acting as pixels when properly reduced in size). My technique uses regions of video content to effectively represent or "paint" heterogeneous regions of the image. Both the partial content of the videos and the whole image are fully visible at the same time, widening the possibilities to deliver meaning in a contemporary aesthetic language.
To better experience this piece as a painting, there is no sound. See it full screen to enjoy details.

This work was featured by the MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, on its official Facebook page

Unreleased Thoughts

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0200

Unreleased Thoughts

Neurons fire. Images formed