PATTERN LANGUAGE (midnight moment interview)

Pattern Language, built in a video game engine, is a rhythmic, strobing composition in richly patterned black and white. Employing cellular automata and crowd-simulation algorithms, this work envisions human life within a labyrinthine “Dirtscraper” – an inverted, underground skyscraper. Indistinct, nongendered figures in shades of grey walk through endless generative levels of lights and right angles, while others fill the screen with dots that bloom or wilt according to the classic “Game of Life” model developed by mathematician John Conway in 1970. Part of a larger project of the same name that has appeared from Kiev to Berkeley to Amsterdam, this work overtook Times Square in New York City every night in May 2018 as a part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment program. Viewers were immersed in the endless labyrinth which mirrors both the pointillist quality of Times Square’s LED billboards and the patterns we ourselves trace through the megastructure environment of New York City. “Pattern Language is born from my ongoing practice designing modern day labyrinths; dense self-supporting structures that emulate living organisms. It was developed during a residency at 3-Legged Dog in Lower Manhattan where I spent time observing transit patterns through New York’s various megastructures. The building I created here is known as an arcology: a fusion of the term “architecture” and “ecology”. It is based on a set of design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitation developed by architect Paolo Soleri in the middle of the twentieth century. In this work, patterns emerge through the interaction of various algorithms. Pattern Language employs a popular cellular automata algorithm called Conway’s Game Of Life to encode a remarkably life-like system in simple black and white pixels. I’m interested in the way our own universe may operate on a similar set of discrete digital rules, bursting from a few small pixels into a life of patterns from screen to screen.” By Peter Burr Programming by Mark Fingerhut Additional graphics by Brenna Murphy Presented by Times Square Arts with Clocktower Productions Video Documentation by Jason Akira Somma and Becca Keating Audio by John Also Bennett More information available at arts.timessquarenyc.org/times-square-arts/projects/midnight-moment/pattern-language/index.aspx