John Hovig
electronic art
The Silos at Sawyer Yards
Studio 106
(281) 755-8127
artist@johnhovig.com
My art uses computer software—generative art—to delve the human spirit. Where I once used pens and brushes to conduct aesthetic experiments, I now use code.
My work is entirely the result of my own handmade code, comprised of simple instructions (not unlike the instructions Sol LeWitt composed for his studio assistants), with no artificial intelligence software. The work is still mine, the artist is still me.
Artificial intelligence is boring and rote. It does not answer questions of human interest. It only repeats the past, a big meat grinder blindly processing the encyclopedias of the world. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as software developers say. (I know. I was one.) A. I. provides no answers to the eternal questions of how to activate the human spirit. That’s still our job.
My new work uses different elements in its explorations, from simple geometric patterns, to reflections upon hand-made mark-making, and allusions of primitive language creation. My pursuit is nothing less than to understand what sparks the human intellect: What makes us tick?
BIO: Born in upstate New York, educated as an electrical engineer, obtained a masters degree in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence, became the CTO and chief software architect of a small internet company, then took a turn toward art through night classes. Resigned after my second child, sold my share in the company, and opened an art studio. After a decade of making paintings, prints and drawings, I began to transfer my aesthetic ideas into software. Today I make exclusively computer-based generative art and software-based photomanipulations.
