Dave Collier
Experimental artist based in Carlisle, north-west England
M
y developments pages serve two functions: one is to coalesce my ideas on the perception of images, especially around shape and colour, and the second is as a repository for the software I design for manipulating images to experiment with the first.
I
am interested in how the design of a two-dimensional image can be aided, enhanced or highlighted through the use of automation.In particular looking at the key elements of a picture, those elements that give it meaning in terms of recognition, mood and atmosphere. Many facets to this of course, and I am especially interested in examining the key elements with the help of software.
One route that I look at in this study is what happens when a picture is changed, brought down to simplified shape and colour and most of my software experiments currently centre on this.
These pages include some software for photo-manipulation, or more accurately image-manipulation (it doesn’t have to be a photo). These software scripts are all my own work, they are experimental and attempt to demonstrate something as explained on each product’s page. The software is free-to-use, on the basis that you should not expect any support and do not expect it to be fully bug-free. It’s experimental.
Seurat’s Parade de Cirque which you can see at The Met Museum’s website (and I think is OK to reproduce here regarding copyright). This is run through my edge detection software giving a brighter hue to breakness breaks that are brighter, and a darker one to those that are more pronounced, and a more opaque line where the difference in brightness between two adjoining areas is greater. The outcome shows just what an effective and interesting use Seurat made of his light and dark areas. The painting is considered one of his masterpieces, no doubt largely on account of its underlying abstract structure.