Ira Greenberg: Toward a Post-Computational Practice

June 14th - July 2

Reception: June 17, 5-7pm

Over the past  30 years Ira Greenberg’s creative practice has meandered between analog and digital. Formally trained as a painter (MFA, Penn ‘92, BFA, Cornell ‘89) with a strong bias toward the observational, his digital exploration began primarily to address very pragmatic concerns, i.e. how to eat. For many years he intentionally tried to keep his practice(s) bifurcated: 

Digital = Utility  |  Analog = Wonderment

Such strategic bifurcation proved a failed strategy, less so in that it didn’t work (he was able to eat), but more so, as he explains, “an inability of doing anything solely for utility, regardless of the medium.” Over time his digital software application jockeying turned toward pure programming, and he eventually abandoned any hope of maintaining control over his practice. His coding exploration resulted in 3 books on the Processing programming language and principles of creative coding, as well as 2 National Science Foundation grants. 

This exhibition collects artifacts from the last 5 years of Greenberg’s mucking about, including drawings, paintings, 2D and 3D prints and generative (real-time code based) NFT’s. He describes his overall practice as Post-Computational, including both the analog and digital work.

Ira Greenberg is Director and Professor of the Center of Creative Computation and holds appointments in the Divisions of Art, Computer Science and Data Science, all at SMU, Dallas, TX. In addition, he and his family maintain a residence in Eldorado, NM.

Ira Greenberg, Richard, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”, 2020