Petros Vrellis is a Greek artist with a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Art. This combination of engineering and artistic creativity gave birth to his algorithmic art. His work has been exhibited and collected all over the world, from Greece to the USA and Italy.
As a “toy inventor”, Petros mainly uses computers, programming languages (c++ and in particular the Open Frameworks open source toolkit) and electronics (cameras, microcontrollers, etc.). The process is as follows: a pattern is created using a specially designed algorithm, with a digital photograph as input and a pattern as output. Each pattern requires more than 2 billion calculations, an impossible task for the human brain.
Thus, a single yarn is wound continuously from one peg to the next between 3 000 and 4 000 times for a total length of 1-2 kilometres. The drawing is wound by hand, with step-by-step instructions dictated by a computer. Where there are no black threads, an all-white tone is obtained. The tone becomes darker as the density of the black threads and their intersections increases. This allows a full grey palette (from black to white) to be created.
The coloured artworks are created from a limited palette of primary colours: black, blue, purple, yellow and green. Combining these primary colours can effectively create a full colour palette.
An engineer's growing thirst for creative expression
Petros has been exposed to art all his life. His father was a writer and poet, and his two uncles were sculptors. “As a child, I loved to draw and paint,” he says. “But what really interested me was experimentation. I think we all have a need to express ourselves creatively. Unfortunately, in this world we have to compromise and suppress this need in order to make a living.”
Petros is a living example of this forced compromise in the name of practicality. He first studied electrical engineering, then started working (and still works) as an engineer. But the creative need for that special “something” kept growing. As he approached his thirties, Petros was fortunate enough to become a student in his uncle’s sculpture studio. This gave him an opportunity for creative expression and eventually he decided to study visual arts.
The secret of demystifying algorithmic art
Inspiration comes in mysterious ways.
Petros has spent the last few years working on his String art project. However, he is currently thinking about moving on and hasn’t found the right direction yet. “Like all people, I have no control over my inspiration,” he says. “So I can only keep working and experimenting, hoping that a new good idea will come…”
* In case you didn’t know, a string is a basic variable in most programming languages that represents a sequence of characters. (Words or sentences.)
Petros has long been fascinated by the ability of writers and artists to demystify life while creating new myths. For example, his thread art project was inspired by Kumi Yamashita’s artworks. His favourite writers include Charles Bukowski, Hermann Hesse, Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, David Eagleman and many others. As far as fine artists are concerned, the list is “almost endless…”.
To see Petros’ latest work, visit Saatchi Art
