ioq3aPaint

Game-based automatic painting system, 2003 and 2010

Oliver, 2003, 2010

ioq3aPaint was a a series of automatic painting experiments made using a computer game engine. The work culminated in 2010, in a solo show at the Hannah Maclure Centre, Dundee, Scotland, with 40 prints on display alongside a projection of the system at work. The printing was generously sponsored by the Swiss museum, Maison d’Ailleurs and printing specialists, ILFORD.

ioq3aPaint began in 2002/3 with a project called q3aPaint, which sought to explore the possibilities of using a video game (in this case QuakeIII Arena) as an automatic painting system. Exploiting a ‘redraw’ glitch in the game, and introducing a variety of modified software bots, combat in the arena was transformed into a lush gestural field of painterly brush-strokes and impacting colour.

Both painting and abstract graph of action, the results seeded research into a second iteration, ioq3aPaint, developed as part of my work as Resident Artist at Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, America. With this new version every lunge, turn and act of injury manifests as a unique and energetic mark as the agents hunt each other in perpetuity.

ioq3aPaint also extends upon the work of q3aPaint by adding live palette manipulation and uses only Open Source software components (the community maintained version of QuakeIII, ioquake3, in particular).

EXHIBITION HISTORY

Hannah Maclure Center for the Arts, Abertay-Dundee, Scotland (solo show), 2010