Artist in Focus: Agoston Nagy
Artist in Focus is an ongoing series featuring hic et nunc (HEN) artists. Interested in being featured in the series? Please complete this form.
PT: Tell us a little about yourself, including what brought you to HEN.
AN: I have been making algorithmic art and responsive environments using free and open-source tools as a member of the Binaura artist collective since the early 2000s. Binaura gives international workshops across the EU, Canada and India and creates works focused on visualizing natural phenomena, cognitive aspects of extended perception, prototyping and an open-source exchange of code and ideas. Our latest pieces feature forests made of hanging papers with generative plotter drawings, cellular shell pattern generators and drawing robots that are generating nonconventional prophecies based on poetic artificial intelligence. Today, I am also conducting research at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design’s Immersive Media Lab.
I joined HEN in its early days. The site has changed so rapidly, and I feel that there is something really interesting happening with this platform and the warm, super interesting community around it.
PT: What’s the story behind the piece you selected to share?
AN: I like to play with one-dimensional cellular automations, since they deal with time, and unfolding emergent patterns based on a simple set of rules can be surprising and visually pleasant. I did some pieces with wolfram automata and reaction diffusion systems. It is interesting to observe natural behaviors that can be computed and to simulate interesting, abstract worlds with them. This piece is also an interactive one that I made when I realized that it is possible to inject javascript into an svg.
HEN could be a missing platforms for maintaining interactive software art and preserving media art history in a new kind of ecosystem.
PT: Can you share an element of your creative practice?
AN: Creating my HEN pieces feels a bit like mixing app store development (experimenting with new ways of monetization and value sharing amongst an inspiring community) and the practice of hackpact, or codevember, or similar creative coding formats. I also love the concept of OpenProcessing or CodePen, Glitch etc, where people share their creations with like-minded artists. Instead of like buttons, the frameworks and concepts of defining value (that comes with web3 & the blockchain technology) seem to be more meaningful in terms of creating sustainable, transparent and healthier online social places.
This process has been all about trying to find my own voice (including inspirations, interests, methods, formats, visual language, sonic synthesis etc.) I also think that HEN provides great opportunities to experiment with new modalities of interaction. How could a tiny, digital artifact affect an audience? How do they communicate? What is the purpose of this conversation?
PT: What’s a recent work that you collected on hic et nunc that you’re excited about and why?
AN: Yellowtail (1998-; SVG/NFT version, 3.2021) by Golan Levin. The works of Golan were my first inspiration from the fields of new media and generative arts. His works and legacy influenced a whole generation of artists, and it is always interesting to see what he is up to. I also really love the pages he creates for his courses on GitHub. Yellowtail has many incarnations, and its playfulness and simplicity is beautiful. HEN can also be one of the missing platforms for maintaining interactive software art and preserving media art history as a new kind of ecosystem.
PT: What is something you’d like to see for the future of hic et nunc and NFTs?
AN: I would love to see come curated content and nonconventional search possibilities. Also, documentation and API example codes would be super useful in order to make personalized interactive pieces.
Agoston Nagy’s collections
More of Agoston Nagy’s work can be found here.
