Andrew Butcher

I’ve been collecting broken TVs from the sidewalk over the last few months and smashing them to see what kinds of cool glitches show up. Over time I’ve learned how lcd TVs are made using a microscopic layer of liquid crystals, pixel grid transistors, polarizers, color filters, and LED’s. Depending on which thing breaks when it gets smashed will you either get lines of color running vertical and horizontal, rainbow and oil slick like patterns, spiderweb cracks, or just blotchy dead zones. This project was going to evolve into an interactive piece where I covered the monitors in a polycarbonate sheet so viewers could push on and move around the glitches as part of the experience. However, when left for a while the glitches in the displays started to disappear as the crystal settled and the signal faded in large areas. Still super fun to break these in the creation of something new and beautiful, kinda like hatching an egg.

EDIT: NEW VENUE, SAME TIME. NOW AT MONUMENT SF. AV Club and TouchDesigner SF introduce: _Underscore - an audio visual “render bender” Celebrating the debut show of TouchDesigner SF and the four-year anniversary show of AV Club! Come gather to celebrate community-oriented independent live electronic audio-visual arts in the Bay :) Schedule: 6:00 - 8:00 - AV Club fourth-bday gathering with snacks and drinks! 8:00 - 10:00 - Audio-visual performances! Show is donation-based, suggested donation $15-$30. Lineup TBA!! art: @5projectors flier: @dqgorelick track id: ‘Enceladus’ R Tyler @1000instamilligrams Alternative names for the show: - Collective effort - Anti social social club - Anti anti anti club - Audio Visual Art Assembly - “Subversive AV Show” - Public Void - Kiki Buba show - Executable Dysfunction - Dark Machines

I had the pleasure of performing a project of mine at @meowwolfdenver for the wedding of two legendary founders of artist living spaces in SF including @monument.house The other talented artists involved included @1000instamilligrams who live coded the music, as well as @na_roda and @from.vacuum who also performed visual sets. I had such a great time working with everyone involved in making this night happen. My project was made in touchdesigner using a combination of rutt etra effects, pixelated layers, and a plexus design using the proximity POP. #touchdesigner @touchdesigner #meowwolfdenver #meowwolf #projectionmapping

What does a forest compute? 🍄‍🟫 This is Generative Art in Natural Space: 1 - Fungal Network by Andrew Butcher In the wet redwood forests of coastal California, fungal networks thread invisibly through decomposing wood and tannin-stained soil, triangulated webs of life solving the same computational problems as our most advanced devices: finding shortest paths, distributing resources, rerouting around failure. This work makes that hidden architecture visible, a generative mesh tracing the stages of colonization from first pioneer contact to full network maturity. We are not the authors of computational logic but rather one of its expressions, in perpetual pursuit of understanding patterns inherent to life itself, learning to read in our own technology what other organisms already do. 🌲 Andrew Butcher is a computational, new media artist and creative technologist. He explores how technology alters our perception of space and relation to one another, often through interactive installations, audio visual performance, and video games. His work explores themes of world building, speculative generative design, and the manipulation of scale. Andrew uses generative software, machine learning, and custom code to explore traditional themes in art such as the perception of light, space, form, and color and how the contemporary relationship to technology is transforming human experience. Made during the The Olfactory Thing Incubator, a four-week incubator with FLORA AI exploring scent and smell in all it’s forms. @florafaunaai is an AI-powered “infinite canvas” designed for creative professionals to generate and iterate on text, images, and videos in a unified, node-based workflow. It connects multiple AI models (such as Stable Diffusion, Runway, and Sora) into a single interface for professional design, marketing, and animation tasks. tiat is a gallery for artists experimenting with emerging technologies ꩜ a 501c3 organizing exhibitions, workshops, and programs that bring together different disciplines, generations, and ways of thinking at the intersection of art & technology #tiat #creativetechnology #artandtechnology #artandtechnology #creativ

I was fortunate to be a part of an awesome lineup of artists for a show titled “Return to the Exhibition” at @tiat.place curated by @480productions . The original theme of the show was “attraction and repulsion, moments of love”. I created two pieces, one which draw the space between people with webbed lines and the other which draws a cat’s cradle like game between the tips of your fingers. The first piece involves connecting people’s joints with lines. As the people get closer together, the lines spring out drawing trails of color. As they pull apart, the lines stretch and create thin strings with tension. Cat’s Cradle is an audio reactive piece that changes based on the distance of each finger on each hand and has the same behavior between lines as the first piece. Thanks so much to everyone involved in such a dope event!! All credit goes to @480productions and @waytooway for organizing

#genuary 4: Lowres. An image or graphic with low resolution, where details are simplified or pixelated Made with #touchdesigner #genuary4

I had the pleasure of exhibiting again at @grayareaorg with @by_subset for another “bring your own beamer” event alongside some dear friends and other talented artists @detronome and I showed a project that involves controlling stable diffusion in a game-like way using an Xbox controller. On the right side we controlled the transformation of a feedback system in touchdesigner with the joystick and buttons of the controller. This was then used as the input image for the streamdiffusion plugin running on daydream, created by @dotsimulate We found prompts that involved art styles that are widely known on the internet worked the best, so we used many renaissance and modern artists as references including: Jan van Eyck, Yves Tanguy, Caspar David Friedrich etc.

There’s a seemingly infinite amount of resources online about how to get started with Touchdesigner but if you’re looking to learn by asking questions in person, come to this total beginner workshop! (Pay what you want)

Had an incredible experience putting up my installation Coral Diffusion at this years @agapeandfriends Halloween party MORPHOGENISIS. The project was created using a complex feedback system called reaction-diffusion which simulates two or more chemicals reacting creating this organic pattern reminiscent of cells splitting in mitosis or oil in water. Shout out to all the other artists and performers who contributed to this epic party! #touchdesigner #reactiondiffusion #digitalart #feedback

Here are some stills and a project demo from the @grayareaorg “bring your own beamer” exhibition in SF where artists are asked to bring their own projectors to show projects on mobile walls around the room. I showed my project “Dither Cave” where viewers are placed in a digital cave environment with a dither effect on the background cave walls and the silhouette cutout of the viewers body. Had so much fun participating in this event and meeting all the other talented artists involved. #generativedesign #creativecoding #grayarea #touchdesigner

Due to the large success of the previous workshop we’re putting on another in-person beginner touchdesigner workshop this Sunday at @sudo.room !! @sudo.room @fabric_of_little_wings @touchdesigner

Next edition of @sudo.room and eat bay creative digital lab evening has a touch designer workshop! 6pm 9/28 Sunday evening! /8vwzplqd Come for the workshop then stay for the play and create joy with light projectors music and art