How do you engrave 2,000 space invaders on the face of a two-inch wooden cube?
With lasers, of course. Or at least that’s what digital artist Jared Tarbell does. A New Mexico native, Tarbell co-founded Etsy, a website that sells vintage art. He’ll present Friday at the UNM Arts Lab.
“I’ve met tons of people in Albuquerque who know about and use Etsy,” said student Cameron Smith, who contacted Tarbell almost a year ago to invite him to present at the University. “It seems like eBay meets Buffalo Exchange.”
Tarbell’s art, Smith said, is infused with New Mexico influence. Tarbell was born in Albuquerque and went to Eldorado High School. He graduated a year early from New Mexico State with a degree in computer science.
Surprisingly, Tarbell said he was not a math-savvy child, but his work is a mix of math and art. At Etsy, he creates search tools powered by algorithms, such as the “search by color” engine.
The color search tool is a work of art itself. Users drag a cursor over a color spectrum. Brightly colored circles pop up, allowing users to choose one of them before being directed to a product.
Tarbell also uses algorithms in his laser work. He’ll present a computer simulation of ants Friday to demonstrate emergence behavior.
Black dots representing ants are displayed on a computer screen, and they wander around blindly until they bump into randomly placed grains of rainbow-colored sand. When the ants encounter a piece of rainbow, they have two options: They either pick the grain up, or if they already have a grain, they drop the one they’re carrying and pick up the new one.
The part that draws Tarbell’s attention to this natural phenomenon is that once the ants have done this behavior for a period of time, the ant pile is created.
“What you don’t actually see is the end product,” he said. “That normally takes five or six hours. It’s kind of a mystery, but if you think about it in reverse, you realize that’s the only thing that can happen.”
Tarbell connected emergence behavior to the formation of cities.
“The cities that we live in are super complex, but nobody sat down and said, ‘This is how our city is going to be,’” he said. “They emerged in an organic form.”
Tarbell said he ponders whether lives have direction, or if humanity is like blind ants wandering around and bumping into grains of sand.
“I like to think about how much of your life is conscious decision-making and how much is on autopilot,” he said. “I think most people are on autopilot for most of the day and you have to practice to be aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
