Document:Q10036

These images are randomly generated by a software collage machine selecting from a database of images that includes my own prints, drawings, paintings and source materials collected by me over the last twenty years. The first Atomic explosion at Trinity Site in the Alamogordo district of New Mexico was an epochal moment - it was the beginning of the Atomic Age, and the product of the biggest military-scientific-industrial project of World War 2 - the Manhattan Project. I worked on this series of artworks because I was fascinated by the great discoveries in Physics from Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, through Quantum Mechanics to the present. The Natural History of Alamogordo is a body of work exploring the iconography of the Manhattan Project - an important landmark in the history of Physics.
Selected images from this series are printed using archive-quality inks onto heavywight 240gsm watercolour paper, and collated as sets of ten loose prints in a black, labelled and documented portfolio. You can select 10 images and order a custom portfolio from me for $250 including postage. Contact me direct at cotton\\[email protected].

the collage-machine
Recently I have digitised all this visual material, as well as my drawings and prints. I have developed a computer program that randomly chooses images from this collection, randomly positions them on the screen, randomly rotates them, scales them and applies different alpha-channel effects to them (degrees of transparency and filtering, colour changes, negativisation, solarisation etc), This software machine is capable of potentially millions - perhaps even billions - of different results, some of which I select and save to print. I have also used Snaps Pro X, a shareware screen capture application, to serially capture every operation of the collage-machine on screen and save these sequences in one serial set as a Quicktime Movie.