Art technology A fusion of and Port Moody artist pushes the boundaries of art, specializes in graphic

Story and photos by Soubhik

Jim Andrews is at the helm of a new art form, creating computer-generated art with a program he built himself. Though he may receive some pushback from the art world who may not accept his work as conventional art.

“I think that the work I do is also very beautiful,” Andrews said.

Aleph Null, Graphic Synthesizer runs until November 20th at Massy Books on 229 Georgia St. E. Andrews said that the exhibit is his second after 1999, but one of his best. The titular Aleph Null is a program that Andrews wrote himself and has continually updated since 2011.

Andrews likened Aleph Null to a musical synthesizer, or an instrument one learns how to play, rather than a tool. While a synthesizer can either create sounds from scratch or sample sounds from the real world, Aleph Null can create images with pure colour or sample images the user imports into it.

“Aleph Null is a software, but it’s all about computer art. The material I’m using is literary, it’s [poetic],” said Andrews, in reference to his work with bill bissett and Jim Leftwich, collaborators featured in the exhibit. “But then there’s the Colour Music stuff, which is just pure colour and that’s more like the computer art part of it.”

A number of the pieces in the exhibit are part of Andrews’ collaboration with bissett, a renowned poet, artist, and musician. The collaboration was born after bissett reached out to Andrews while curating another exhibit in Toronto.

“I said, ‘how about you send me some of your visual poetry, and I’ll