Art isn’t just about dragging a paintbrush or a stick of charcoal across a sheet of paper anymore. Even just using a camera isn’t enough for this modern day and age. Artists like Ayaka Ito use computer programming to create something new and exciting.
Graphic designer and illustrator Ito, who originally hails from Japan but currently resides in New York City, tells us that she began her Scribbled Line People project in 2008 for a ‘3D Motion & Particle’ course offered at her alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology. She has a history of incorporating photography into her artwork but adding an element of programming couldn’t have been accomplished without her collaborator Randy Church. The duo used applications like Flash and Photoshop to break down the photographic images and build them back up into intriguing portraits composed of a series of interweaving lines.
The works these two modern artists have produced are nothing short of extraordinary. You can clearly see the inspiration from wire sculptures, but their creations are still their own medium of art. There are no physical wires involved, though it’s hard to believe when looking up close at the smooth 3D lines lacing in and out of one another.
We were lucky enough to get in touch with Ayaka and ask her a little bit about her collaborative project and the inspiration behind it. She kindly responded:
“As Randy and I talked about our passions and the possibility to integrate them into our project, we asked ourselves: why not work together to create a bad ass interface that could integrate 3D scribbled lines into photography? Our objective in approaching the visual, was to create a series of answers to show how scribbled lines could develop normal portraits into abstract art.
“Upon studying how lines could be integrated into a realistic photography composition, we were inspired by wire sculptures made into human form by Rachel Ducker. We studied why these wire sculptures looked so intriguing, and how the wires could look like it unraveled the human form. Erik Natzke was another contemporary artist who inspired us, created fascinating artwork out of Flash programming.”
