Gordon Monro is an artist who makes images from data. In his project, ’Eureka: Singular and Plural’, Gordon has created a computer program where data sourced from the events connected to the 1854 Eureka Stockade has been used to generate imagery built around the random fragmentation of an eight-pointed Eureka star.
The mathematical pattern that underlies this project is built on ‘ghosts’ of Eureka stars. This pattern is not random, but does not repeat, however far it is extended. Some of the ghost stars have coloured "rosettes" around them, each representing an individual person.
The arrival of fortune-seeking immigrants from many nations on the Ballarat goldfields and their banding together to protest an unfair mining licence system culminated in the Eureka rebellion. Eureka was a social revolution; part of a wider international struggle for democratic reform and civil rights. At the time of the Eureka rebellion, a technological revolution was also underway. Through a highly symbolic visual representation, Gordon explores the way these social and technological revolutions were intertwined.
Image: Gordon Monro, Eureka: Singular and Plural 2020 (detail), computer generated image.
