Clement Valla is an artist and programmer interested in processes that produce unfamiliar artifacts and skew reality. Valla works within systems, applying a ‘programmed brain’ that pushes problem-solving logic to irrational ends. His recent work examines copies, repetition and reproduction markets – from Chinese ‘Oil-Painting Factories’ to drawings on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This work explores the tension between individual creativity and the influence of systems and networks on the individual.
Valla received a BA from Columbia University in 2001, where he studied architecture. After working for architects in the USA, France, and China, Valla began using computers and digital technologies in his own work. He studied the intersection between art and computer programming at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Digital+Media MFA program.
He has collaborated with a number of artists, architects, designers, scientists and archaeologists, developing novel uses for digital technologies. His work has been shown and published internationally. He is currently a full time faculty member in the Graphic Design Department at RISD.
Academic areas of interest
Valla writes instructions and computer code in order to explore systems. His programs are generative. They rely on chance, randomness, repetition and recombination in order to produce complex and unexpected images that lie on the boundary between nature and artifice. He finds systems that produce unintended artifacts, unexplored juxtapositions. Glitches, not designed effects. He collects these strange occurrences.
Valla explores an authorless world at the intersection of human labor and digitized systems, a blurred boundary between human creativity and machine intelligence where computers are built to think increasingly like humans and where humans act like computers, and uses them as metaphors for looking at nature and humanity. In this ambiguous territory, he plays notions of the hand-made, the mechanical, the natural and the systematic off of one another.
Courses
Fall 2023 Courses
CTC 2009-01 - CODE AS MEDIUM
LevelUndergraduate
UnitExperimental and Foundation Studies
Subject Computation,Technology, and Culture
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
FormatStudio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
CTC 2009-01
CODE AS MEDIUM
LevelUndergraduate
UnitExperimental and Foundation Studies
Subject Computation,Technology, and Culture
PeriodFall 2023
Credits3
FormatStudio
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: W | 11:20 AM - 4:20 PMInstructor(s): Clement VallaLocation(s): Waterman Building, Room 33Enrolled / Capacity: 16Status: Closed
SECTION DESCRIPTION
In this advanced level art and design course, students will explore the creative potential of code as an artistic medium in its own right. Through a series of projects and exercises, students will develop their coding practice in a way that complements their ongoing studio practice and gain a deeper understanding of the unique opportunities and challenges of working with code as an artistic medium. Building on the foundational skills and concepts learned in CTC-1000 Introduction to Coding or an equivalent coding course, students will dive deeper into coding as an artistic medium, exploring advanced techniques for generative art, interactive installations, and other forms of digital media. They will be introduced to a range of tools and frameworks for creative coding, such as Processing, p5.js, and openFrameworks. Students will also examine the historical and cultural context of code as a medium, including the role of technology in shaping contemporary art and design practices. Through readings and discussions, they will explore the implications of code as a means of expression.