This is too cool! I was exploring a site linked to realneo called Left Luggage [1], and came across a project created by Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson as part of their hyperchoreography initiatives, described as "An interactive moving mosaic for the web." I can't recall any so engaging places on the web, where an individual creates a new art form - a dancing mosaic. I'll let words from the Ardnamurchan Zillij website [2] describe this further, below, and strongly suggest you check it out - my first effort is shown in a screenshot above, but what I created was actually a living, moving work of art... each of the images that make up the mosaic are short video loops, so each of the images and the overall composition are constantly moving and changing - as a Flash file, I didn't know how to save it, so it was temporary and so personal... give it a try here [2].
Between July and September 2004 Simon Fildes was New Dynamics Artist in Residence in the dispersed communities of Ardnamurchan as part of the Scottish Arts Council supported programme for Social Inclusion Partnership Communities. This was a part-time role to develop new 'new media' work with young people. Whilst staying there the award-winning video-maker Katrina McPherson worked along side Simon to create a new work for Alt-W called 'Ardnamurchan Zillij'.
The artists created a collaborative work with individuals from the geographically diverse groups in Ardnamurchan . They built up a bank of over 130 digital tiles based on looping moving images. The interface allows a user to select tiles and design a constantly moving colourful mosaic of small video clips. The video clips were created by designing, choreographing and videoing the movement of individuals in the communities of Ardnamurchan and the environment around them, and reducing the clips to near abstract shapes and sounds .
The idea to create an interactive moving digital mosaic was inspired by the artists fascination with Islamic Moroccan tradition which relies on geometry and endless repetition as an outlet for expression using shapes called fourmah to create intricate patterns, Zillij. Katrina and Simon were interested in exploring some interesting cultural parallels in this non representational form of art with the west coast of Scotland.
