







Robert Allison
With a background in Mechanical Engineering and Architecture, Robert is interested in how the artistic and the technical may inform and invigorate each other, producing output that is new and different to both. In his work individual colours are defined as ‘genetic sequences’, realized digitally as a string of 1s and 0s. Each is a kind of ‘creature’, encoded by a binary DNA, but then expressed as the usual RGB or HSV colourmap values. Because of this representation, colours can be mutated and crossed with each other within the computer to form new variations. Over sized pixels, rastered onto the image plane, are used to record these colours as they are created. Visualising these operations shows how richness and complexity can emerge from simple processes iterated to a massive scale. The potential of the purely computational, the mechanistic, is explored as it approaches the boundary with the natural, the tactile, the ‘real’.
The work is arranged into series, each investigating a different combination of techniques, rendered for effect. The pieces are randomly seeded, and are a unique result from the process they express. They are titled by their ‘Unix timestamp’ – the exact time of creation recorded as the number of milliseconds since 00:00:00 UTC 1st January 1970.
Temporary Exhibitions