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Generative art over the years

blog.veitheller.de

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Generative art over the years

#11
post #7

One of my hobbies back in college was to write fun js fiddles [1]. It was super fun to have the time and curiosity to investigate something. I've been missing it more and more each passing day. I was super curious about generative art, procedural generation... I guess it is a negative term now, with AIs being able to create such complex stuff as video, audio and God knows what else. I was once working on a memes app…

Machines can quickly build repeatable, efficient, 'perfect' clothing - but people still knit.

Re: Generative art over the years

#12
post #7

One of my hobbies back in college was to write fun js fiddles [1]. It was super fun to have the time and curiosity to investigate something. I've been missing it more and more each passing day. I was super curious about generative art, procedural generation... I guess it is a negative term now, with AIs being able to create such complex stuff as video, audio and God knows what else. I was once working on a memes app…

Hmm, isn't that a little like saying "now that we have cameras, no one needs to paint any more!" AIs can generate realistic video and images, but for me the fun of generative art is that it isn't realistic, it has texture, you can get a sense of what kind of patterns it will make, like echoes of the algorithm. Sure, you could probably prompt for some kind of geometric image, but if you asked for a little script that made them, then you could make tweaks and see what happens...

Re: Generative art over the years

#13

> I now have a small library of simulated materials: watercolor washes, dry brush strokes, felt-tip pens, cracked glaze, pencil fills. None of them are physically accurate. I’m not simulating fluid dynamics or anything like that, I don’t need to. They’re impressions, heuristics that capture enough of the character of a material to be convincing and evoke an emotion. I find this to be a key insight. I've been working…

Many years ago I went to a photoshop conference to try and get better. There was a talk about converting color photos to black and white. As a former bw film photog this interested me. Black and white film is a little wierd (some people put red filters on the lenses to increase contrast)

He showed some techniques. I think someone asked a question about the best way, but the presenter got a little ranty and basically said the way that looks best to your eye is the best way.

Re: Generative art over the years

#14
post #7

One of my hobbies back in college was to write fun js fiddles [1]. It was super fun to have the time and curiosity to investigate something. I've been missing it more and more each passing day. I was super curious about generative art, procedural generation... I guess it is a negative term now, with AIs being able to create such complex stuff as video, audio and God knows what else. I was once working on a memes app…

Machines can quickly build repeatable, efficient, 'perfect' clothing - but people still knit.

Art isn’t useful or practical, clothing is.

Re: Generative art over the years

#15
P5.js is pretty great.

I used it create art, basically taking animal photos and using the dna sequence from that animal to recreate the photo using the 4 letters. (I did four passes using different size letters and layered in Gimp). People seem to like them, and they got into an art:science show.

https://p5js.org/

Coding train has a lot of videos on using p5.js Some of them more sophisticated than the childish iconography appears. It’s pretty fun.

https://thecodingtrain.com/tracks

Re: Generative art over the years

#16
post #7

One of my hobbies back in college was to write fun js fiddles [1]. It was super fun to have the time and curiosity to investigate something. I've been missing it more and more each passing day. I was super curious about generative art, procedural generation... I guess it is a negative term now, with AIs being able to create such complex stuff as video, audio and God knows what else. I was once working on a memes app…

Because the process of creating something is transformative

Re: Generative art over the years

#17
https://www.amazon.com.au/Generative-Design-Visualize-Progra... for anyone who is interested in a guided experience of writing this stuff, I have this book. Filled with examples, conceptual explanations (sometimes having someone explain something very simple to you is helpful!) and a lot of nice pictures.

I think there are newer versions of this book, though I haven't tried finding it. It's a hefty coffee table book as-is

Re: Generative art over the years

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines can quickly build repeatable, efficient, 'perfect' clothing - but people still knit.

Art isn’t useful or practical, clothing is.

I have a very nice knife that is absolutely art, and is extremely useful.

Re: Generative art over the years

#20
post #6

It is worth mentioning this site when talking about generative art, IMHO. https://bauble.studio/ And https://toodle.studio/ Both written by the same guy who wrote the Janet for Mortals book, about the Janet language, which supports both those sites. I'm really wanted to see if I could combine those tools to make Arabic art inspired generative art. Anyone know of any projects which are doing that? There is a lot of cr…

Generative art inspired by Arabic art happens to be a rabbit hole I went down last year and still have my notes on. Research on the topic seems to have waxed and waned sufficiently long ago that the best resources I found have suffered from bit rot, thankfully much of it can still be accessed through the Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140701114342/http://www.cgl.uw...

https://web.archive.org/web/20180426122308/http://www.wozzec...

Of course the topic is still alive to some extent, but the above 2 "dead" homepages remain some of the best entry points I've found overall.

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