About
My name is Marcin Ignac and I’m polish artist / programmer / designer living in London, UK. I visualize data, create artificial life forms, experiment with technology and combine my passion for graphics with art of programming.
1. What
I perceive my art as a visualization of an evolving idea. While the initial impulse may come from nature, set of numbers or one of the situations in my life, the final outcome is a result of a process of working with the matter and trying to understand it.
2. Why
In my works I’m looking for aesthetic qualities bridging simplicity and complexity. I find beauty and inspiration in structures of biological organisms, in patterns emerging from data and complexity of computer algorithms.
3. How
As much as in the final result I’m interested in creating software tools enabling me to explore my concepts. For me the code is both a tool and a medium. I use it to sketch out the first idea, learn from it and decide what direction to follow, what aspects of the achieved image are worth investigating more and what form is most suitable for it.
Contact
-
Project requests:
marcin@variable.io -
Personal email:
contact@marcinignac.com -
Twitter:
@marcinignac
Info
Education
I have a bachelor degree in Computer Science, and I took part in Intelligent Decision Support Systems master program at Poznan University of Technology (Poznań / Poland). I was also studying Intermedia at Academy of Fine Arts (Poznań / Poland) and finished Interaction Design Pilot Year at CIID (Copenhagen / Denmark).
Work
2012 - now, London / UK
Owner and Computational Designer at Variable working with data visualization, generative art and new media
2010 - 2011, Copenhagen / Denmark
Technology and Interaction Designer, Researcher at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design working with data visualization, user interface research and prototyping
2009 - 2010, Copenhagen / Denmark
Creative Coder and Interaction Designer at shiftcontrol working with real-time graphics, data visualization, interactive installations, new media, user interfaces and responsible for research, design and development
2006 - 2007, Poznan / Poland
Part time job as a software engineer and user interface designer at Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
Exhibitions
- Museum Week, artwork showcase at Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, UK, 2015-03 (Museum Week project)
- Museum of Future Government Services, exhibition, Dubai, UAE, 2014-02 (Flora project)
- Birmingham Artist, reveal yourself!, exhibition showcasing Polish artists in Birmingham, UK, 2013-05 (Cindermedusae project)
- Gallery Weekend, exhibition, Poznan, PL, 2013-05 (Populus project)
- Pencil to Pixel, exhibition, London, UK, 2012-11 (Digital Type Wall project)
- art+bits, festival exhibition, Katowice, PL, 2012-11 (Tangent project)
- The Big Picture exhibition during Ars Electronica'12 collaboration with Visualizing.org in Linz, Austria, 2012-09 (Sea Transport Network visualization)
- Generative Art, exhibition during 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, 2011-09 (Cindermedusae project)
- Alpha-ville '11 Festival, London, United Kingdom, 2011-09 (Nine Point Five project)
- Computational Aesthetics '11 Art Show, Vancouver, Canada, 2011-08 (Cindermedusae project)
- Level 2.0, exhibition during Kultura 2.0 conference, Warsaw, Poland, 2010-11 (Pattern and Dualism projects)
- Vivisesja '09, International Festival of New Audiovisual Phenomenons, Poznań, Poland, 2009-11 (3xI project)
- NEXT '09, Nordic Exceptional Trendshop 2009, Aarhus, Denmark, 2009 (Compound Eye project)
- Między POZNANIEM a rzeczywistością – Academy of Fine Arts End of Year Exhibition , Poznań, Poland, 2008-06 (Populus project)
- Voyage Sentimental – Mediations Biennale, Poznań, Poland, 2008-10 (Populus project)
Talks
- Meta Design - talk at Krakatoa talk club, Bratislava, SK, 2016-10
- Visualising Invisible Systems - talk at DataViz London Meetup, London, UK, 2016-07
- Data Is Not A Number - talk at SHACK15 Data Science Hub Launch Event, London, UK, 2016-06
- Modular WebGL with PEX - talk at WebGL Workshop, London, UK, 2016-03
- Understanding The World Through Code - talk at Mira Festival, Barcelona, ES, 2016-02
- Feeding algorithms with data - Artist talk at National Plant Phenomics Centre, Aberystwyth, UK, 2015-09
- Visualize X - Talk at VISUALIZEDio, London, UK, 2014-11
- Uncharted Data - Talk at Bartlett Nexus, London, UK, 2013-05
- Data Art with Plask and WebGL - Talk at Resonate'13, Belgrade, Serbia, 2013-03
- Computational Everything, Talk at Art+Bits '12, Katowice, Poland, 2012-11
- Evolving Tools - Talk at FITC'12 Amsterdam, Holland, 2012-02
- How to move that pixel? – Pecha Kucha presentation at Obóz Kultury 2.0 – MediaLab Chrzelice, Chrzelice, Poland, 2010-08
- Sketching in Code – Presentation at Java Users Group, Poznan, Poland, 2010-05
- Look around you – Presentation at Dorkbot CPH, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008-11
Press / publications
- Artist profile in IdN v21n6, Hong Kong, 2015
- Quaint Quarterly, Singapore, 2015 (Fibers project)
- Featured in Written Images generative art book, USA, 2011, (Cindermedusae project)
Writing
- Making Prototypes Alive - Article for design_pl, 2011-11
Teaching
- Data Visualization in JavaScript and Plask, workshop at Information Experience Design / Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2013-05
- Information Visualization, two week course with Golan Levin at CIID Interaction Design Program, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012-03
- Data Visualization in Processing, workshop at Art+Bits '12, Katowice, Poland, 2012-11
- Introduction to Processing, workshop at Hackdays '11, Łódź, Poland, 2011-07
- Flash and Data Visualization course at CIID Interaction Design Program, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011-03
- Advanced Scripting in Flash, one week course at CIID Interaction Design Program, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009-01
More
Want to know more? I’m distributed… so view my LinkedIn profile, follow my tweets or visit variable.io.