Flora

Spotlight
from Idea to Artwork

Is there a central theme in your work?
If I had to choose one main theme, it would probably be the wave. Water waves, wave movements – ever since I studied near the Atlantic, this subject has become a great passion of mine. I originally applied to art school with watercolours and photography, but even then I had already begun working in series. The individual image was never the most important thing to me; what mattered was the sequence and, with it, movement – even if at first that movement existed only through association or in the mind. This sense of flow, which can at times feel hectic and at others meditative, is a theme that repeatedly appears in my work in an aesthetic way.

The work FLORA is controlled and shaped by an algorithm. How did you arrive at this algorithm?
I started programming relatively late. Before that, I had been very involved with animation and experimental film, although I was not yet creating animation myself. I was fascinated by the aesthetics of joint movement, by the naturalness of the many possibilities of rotation and the sense of vitality inherent in them. In order to replicate this, I began exploring programming. That allowed me to try out many different things, define a system of rules and experiment with a wide range of parameters.
I did not know in advance what would happen. When I first saw the forms and figures created by the FLORA algorithm, it felt like an incredible discovery. Developing the algorithm, introducing formulas into it and making the work interactive became my main focus. Ultimately, the artwork is the algorithm itself, and because it is interactive, viewers and audiences can explore that algorithm aesthetically for themselves.

Visitors can influence the algorithm through their interaction and control the movement themselves?
Exactly. As I said, it is all about waves. Waves have an amplitude and a frequency, and the many different waves relate to one another. The technical parameters define the waves, which begin to move and overlap – just as you can observe in water. There are smaller waves, larger waves and waves that spill over. Waves overlap and create new forms.
My aim was to give viewers a great deal of control themselves. They have a lot of creative freedom when playing with the algorithm. It is always fascinating to see how differently people approach it. Some are very analytical, while others are highly intuitive and playful.

Have you ever seen the same figure twice?
No, an exact repetition can hardly occur. Theoretically, it would be possible, but the probability is simply too low, because there are almost infinitely many possibilities and so many overlapping processes taking place. Of course, there are certain aesthetic tendencies that I recognise, and perhaps it is precisely this variety that makes FLORA so interesting.
For me, FLORA is actually the most abstract work I have created so far – I come more from a figurative background. But the algorithm is built on exactly this idea of figurative movement. What emerges may be abstract forms, but the movement of those forms triggers associations with living creatures we recognise.
It is precisely this space between the figurative and the abstract that invites us to dream. The further you move into abstraction, the more associations emerge, stimulating the viewer’s imagination. And that is exactly what creates this dreamlike atmosphere.

Biography

Philipp Artus is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. His work explores manifestations of life through movement, sound and visual language. He composes audiovisual experiences that combine playful elements with minimalist structures, timeless themes with contemporary observations, and turbulent acceleration with contemplative stillness. After graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, France, Artus pursued self-directed studies in animation, physics and music theory and completed a postgraduate programme at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany.

Credits

Concept, Animation and Code:
Philipp Artus