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Generative art over the years

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Re: Generative art over the years

#31

Post by heliographe »

acomjean wrote: post #13
heliographe wrote: post #5

> 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…

Yes, that makes sense to me. Black and white film is a very flexible medium - you can make very different prints from the same negative, it has lots of latitude to play with the contrast, dodge/burn, etc, so there’s not necessarily a single “best” interpretation.

And as you point out, at capture time you can use color filters to affect the image; processing too can lead to fairly different results based on what developer you use.

This is in contrast to color film, which I find to be much more rigid and narrow in how it’s meant to look and be processed; one could argue there’s much less range for interpretation from negative to final image (especially so with slide film, which completely falls apart if it’s ever so slightly over/under exposed).

Re: Generative art over the years

#32

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

acomjean wrote: post #13
heliographe wrote: post #5

> 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…

The aesthetics of B&W are super complex and very variable, so the idea that there's a "best" option for a format that covers a huge range of possible effects is indeed unhelpful.

But it's still useful to have some of those effects catalogued and easily accessible as presets. Photoshop doesn't quite do that, which on the one hand makes it hard for beginners to get a good look, but also leaves some space for those who want to go deeper to get more creative.

Re: Generative art over the years

#33

Post by phlsa »

Reading this makes me want to fire up Processing [1] again. I remember spending hours and days with it in my early twenties. The immediacy of writing a few simple commands, hitting "Run" and seeing graphical output is still unsurpassed and created an almost addictive creative feedback loop that I haven't seen anywhere else yet.

[1] https://processing.org

Re: Generative art over the years

#35

Post by benrutter »

p5v wrote: post #28

Generative art was my first love. By accident, I ended up being a student of the great Frieder Nake ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake ) and that changed my future trajectory. Eventually, this led me to writing my own indie book on generative art with Go: https://p5v.gumroad.com/l/generative-art-in-golang , which led me to a talk I gave on GopherCon Europe: https://youtu.be/NtBTNllI_LY?si=GMePA3CfVQZJq2O7 T…

> Sadly, AI-generated imagery sort of killed the mojo of algorithmic art for me

I used to (and occasionally still do) make generative art and found this too! Although I'm not really sure why - I still love good generative art and don't really consume any AI generated art intentionally.

I think possibly one of the main things that happened was a lot of online generative art communities got flooded first by NFTs, and then AI generated art. I find it a lot harder to reliably find other people's generative art these days.

Re: Generative art over the years

#36

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

p5v wrote: post #28

Generative art was my first love. By accident, I ended up being a student of the great Frieder Nake ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frieder_Nake ) and that changed my future trajectory. Eventually, this led me to writing my own indie book on generative art with Go: https://p5v.gumroad.com/l/generative-art-in-golang , which led me to a talk I gave on GopherCon Europe: https://youtu.be/NtBTNllI_LY?si=GMePA3CfVQZJq2O7 T…

I spent a fair amount of time with p5 etc, but the results always felt limited and brittle. You need a lot of complexity before anything really interesting happens, and Processing lacks features like gradient fills that limit what's possible. It helped there were people like Jared Tarbell who (IMO) were way ahead of what most people were doing, and were willing to share their code.

I wasn't unhappy with some of the results, but it was an interesting and frustrating struggle.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/32832718@N00/17951484570/in/ph... https://www.flickr.com/photos/32832718@N00/19868350512/in/ph... https://www.flickr.com/photos/32832718@N00/17952106385/in/ph...

You can push AI in the same way and end up in some unusual spaces, but the quality often degrades when you get there.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fr...

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fo...

Re: Generative art over the years

#37

Post by benrutter »

bandrami wrote: post #18

As someone who makes and enjoys generative music I've always wondered what the parallels were like in the visual and plastic arts. This is cool.

Any recommendations for good generative music to check out? I've always loved the idea, but know of Brian Eno's "Discrete Music" and that's about it.

Re: Generative art over the years

#38

Post by drayfield »

benrutter wrote: post #37
bandrami wrote: post #18

As someone who makes and enjoys generative music I've always wondered what the parallels were like in the visual and plastic arts. This is cool.

Any recommendations for good generative music to check out? I've always loved the idea, but know of Brian Eno's "Discrete Music" and that's about it.

I recommend https://generative.fm/ - the creator also has a nice little intro course on creating generative music systems on Gumroad: https://alexbainter.gumroad.com/l/generative-music-systems?l...

Re: Generative art over the years

#39

Post by TJSomething »

LastTrain wrote: post #14
abrookewood wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Art isn’t useful or practical, clothing is.

A lot of clothes aren't particularly practical. I'd argue that artifacts are more likely to be art if their purpose is more aesthetic than practical. As such, I'd say that some articles of clothing are art (like anything you see on a runway), some aren't (e.g. basic T-shirt), and some seem ambiguous to me (some ties might be art, but some are pretty boring and they don't have much practical use).

Re: Generative art over the years

#40

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

OZYMANDIASAK wrote: post #21
ww520 wrote: post #4

Years ago. I dabbled in generative art. I even wrote a small Forth-like language to control the generation. It's basically controllable chaos with math or chaos within bounding patterns. The results were often unexpected. Some examples: https://imgur.com/a/UjWLy7s

This is beautiful. I'd really love to see some serious discourse about the place that generative art should have in our society and about what art really means in today's age of overconsumption. I'm not sure art is still meant to be a widely shared experience and smarter people than should tackle this idea.

> I'd really love to see some serious discourse about the place that generative art should have in our society

For me (and many others), the “how” of art is just as important as the “what”, if not more important. There are installations that reflect this, many of which are interactive and allow the observer to become part of the art itself.

And if you extend the definition of “generative”, it can include many other methods, like swinging a paint can with a hole in the bottom over an empty canvas to create random patterns based on pendulum movement. Myself, like many others, recognize the amount of creativity and effort that goes into this type of “generative” art, especially in comparison to others. I also appreciate the creativity and complexity of the grandparent’s generative system.

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