Billy Ryan

Australia

Billy Ryan is a video and photographic artist based in Sydney, Australia. His practice is deeply rooted in a fascination with nature and its ability to evoke wonder, imagination, and echo the strange logic of dreams. Working across multiple disciplines, he explores ‘the unseen’: the ethereal realm that surrounds us, but often escapes perception. Ryan personifies elements of nature by blending them with threads of speculative fiction, childhood memory, and daydream. Through this poetic lens, he creates imaginative depictions of the environment that resonate with the human experience, generating a vivid interplay between the organic and the constructed. To visualise these hidden dimensions, Ryan employs the use of optical technology - a full-spectrum camera - capable of capturing light beyond the visible range (Infrared and ultraviolet). This expanded way of seeing renders landscapes in hypnotic and uncanny ways, offering a heightened perspective that feels both intensely hyperreal and strangely familiar.

Ryan is also co-founder and a lead artist at creative studio Babekühl, a creative studio transforming ideas into expressive visual worlds through motion and immersive experiences. From creating music videos, to taking part in the Pixels Show in Times Square, and being exhibited across galeries in Australia, Billy Ryan's unique artistic vision appeals to audiences partial to finding beauty in natural phenomena.


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Symphonies in Wattle

Symphonies_in_Wattle_Billy_Ryan_Collage.mp4

It is often said that plants and flowers thrive when exposed to certain kinds of music. While this idea lacks scientific consensus, it suggests that stimulation from vibrations and sound waves may affect plant life in ways similar to insects buzzing, a breeze passing through leaves, or raindrops pattering on petals.

This series is inspired by the delicate, unseen relationship between nature and sound. Using visual displacement and spectrograms*, the works abstract a collection of botanical photographs taken over many years, some dating back to the mid-2000s. The spectrograms are extracted from a selection of my favourite 1960s jazz recordings, allowing sound, rhythm, and frequency to imprint themselves onto the texture of the image.

*Spectrograms are visual representations of sound, showing how a signal’s frequency spectrum changes over time.

technique

collage

format

portrait

duration

01:39

year

2025

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More from Billy Ryan

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Generative art
Generative art refers to a way of creating artworks using an autonomous system. In digital art, these are usually generated from code and algorithms created by the artist, often with certain predefined parameters or systems. Although these parameters guide the final outcome of the work, generative art is generally a surprising way to create artworks, as the results are often unexpected and the number of possible outcomes can be infinite.
AI
AI art is a branch of generative art that uses artificial intelligence. Unlike other generative artworks, AI artworks use specific complex algorithms and models derived from machine learning. The most common methods for creating AI art today are GANs (generative adversarial networks) or proprietary prompting platforms such as ChatGPT, Sora, Midjourney, or Dall-e.
3D
3D art uses 3D software such as Blender, Cinema4D, Houdini, or video game software such as Unity to create works of art. In 3D works, artists can either arrange assets (the 'objects' in a 3D artwork or world) that they have created themselves or purchased from other creators to create elaborate environments and scenes (an approach to 3D art called 'set dressing'), or specialize in sculpting, which involves creating their own objects and assets.
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is a specialized 3D technique that allows 3D objects to be created from numerous photographs taken of an object or scene from multiple angles. These photos are then compiled to determine the specific positioning, shape, and dimensions of the object in space, and then converted into a 3D model. Initially developed for engineering and urban planning, photogrammetry has become a way for artists to produce extremely accurate 3D models from real-life images.
Collage
An extension of the traditional, plastic approach to collage, digital collage involves searching for and cutting out multiple images, extracting them from their original context, and recomposing them in a new arrangement to create a work of art. Artists can use their own photographs or find images on the internet.
Illustration
Digital illustrations are created using software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Procreate. As with drawing on paper, the artist uses a stylus to sketch a figure or object, usually on a tablet, to construct a scene or artistic universe. Unlike traditional drawing methods, digital illustration is much more forgiving, as mistakes can be easily corrected and drawn elements and objects can be easily moved around within a scene.
Video
Video artworks primarily use a recording camera, but may sometimes include additional post-processing or editing to distort, modify or add additional elements to the image. Some artists use state-of-the-art recording equipment to create macro zoom-ins or time lapses, privileging fidelity to the subject matter. Others use additional softwares to significantly modify or warp the video, creating an alternative perspective on the world that surrounds us.

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