One has to remember that "generative art" only characterizes techniques for generating pictures. Art itself is about what the picture makes people feel, or what they have to say. Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...
Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
51–60 of 112 posts
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#52I think Naon is very distinctive for his embracement of the importance of human touch & influence in generative art. His choice of color, his adjustment of the shape and form in the work (either intentional or accidental) all produce works that have a human element to them even as they are generated by a Processing script. Automation is a tool and a big element of the work, but the vision of the artist and his creati…
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Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#53This gives me an idea. What it game textures for 3D models were entirely made up of shaders/generative algorithms. The entire game could be rendered with an equation and never have to load assets.
Check out Signed Distance Fields (SDF) on Shadertoy.
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#54I know art is whatever people describe as art but I can't really get behind this specific kind of creation. To me this creates as much emotion as a gravatar and reminds me of my dabbling in fractal art. Just hit random until something nice comes out.
Irritating and parochial post. It doesn't look random at all. There is thought behind it. Hence the code.
At all?
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#55Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#56One has to remember that "generative art" only characterizes techniques for generating pictures. Art itself is about what the picture makes people feel, or what they have to say. Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...
> Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...
Beauty is the goal of art.
If his works don't resonate as well as a Nikolay Dubovskoy or a Cy Twombly, or any other human artist, it's in beauty that he fails.
I find that generally this confusion around "beauty" comes from using a popular but non-standard definition of beauty.
Beauty has meant, since the ancient Greeks and up through the romantics to today, "a higher emotional response", whether joyful, sorrowful or disgust.
Beauty is often confused for perfection among laymen. This is not a popular definition of beauty with aesthetic theoreticians, and only reached popularity under the regimes of the early 20th century fascists.
Beauty is a revelatory emotion, any revelatory emotion.
In aesthetics, the opposite of beauty isn't ugliness, but literalism and cold intellectualization.
That which isn't beauty in art is mere journalism, politics, or advertising -- these are lesser concerns than beauty.
Confusing that which isn't beauty in art for the core of art is like thinking that fashion and hairstyles is the core of music, when quite the opposite is true. Fashion diminishes music, not strengthens it.
Similarly -- that which is not about beauty in art diminishes it, not strengthens it.
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#57It seems that recently there's been interest in procedurally-generated imagery among artists, but almost all completely unaware that the demoscene has been doing the same (and much advanced its techniques) for many years: http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarching... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
Demoscene demos are nice, but to me they feel more like expressions of technical prowess rather than aesthetic art. I don't think I've ever seen a demo where the result transcends the algorithm, and I don't think that's the goal of the demoscene in any case. They want to showcase how much technical brilliance they can fit in a couple of KB's. That's different from this example, where the goal is more like how much ex…
> I don't think I've ever seen a demo where the result transcends the algorithm, and I don't think that's the goal of the demoscene in any case.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. "Everything" includes all of art, and all sub-genres of art.
You might not have looked hard enough. If you are interested in finding the good ones, you should spend some time poking around; there are definitely demos with beautiful results, from people trying to make art, that aren't about the algorithm.
These two popped into my head, but there are bunches of great examples.
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#58I thought this was going to be a profile of Scott Draves of Electric Sheep fame.
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#59One has to remember that "generative art" only characterizes techniques for generating pictures. Art itself is about what the picture makes people feel, or what they have to say. Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...
> Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful... Beauty is the goal of art. If his works don't resonate as well as a Nikolay Dubovskoy or a Cy Twombly, or any other human artist, it's in beauty that he fails. I find that generally this confusion around "beauty" comes from using a popular but non-standard definition of beauty. Beauty has meant, since the ancient Greeks…
Not just beauty. Also expression, and emotional appeal. Some very ugly paintings and sculptures speak to whole generations about injustice etc.
Maybe generative art fails there too, I don't know.
Re: Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful... Beauty is the goal of art. If his works don't resonate as well as a Nikolay Dubovskoy or a Cy Twombly, or any other human artist, it's in beauty that he fails. I find that generally this confusion around "beauty" comes from using a popular but non-standard definition of beauty. Beauty has meant, since the ancient Greeks…
Not just beauty. Also expression, and emotional appeal. Some very ugly paintings and sculptures speak to whole generations about injustice etc. Maybe generative art fails there too, I don't know.
Ugliness is not the opposite of beauty. Ugliness is a form of beauty, or at least its necessary foil. This has been understood for thousands of years.
See Laocoön and His Sons, one of the most beautiful works of art in the human tradition, because of the tragic ugliness therein.
See Hotel Rwanda, one of the most beautiful films ever made, because of the tragic ugliness therein.
Injustice in art often builds the beauty. If there was only injustice, with nothing transcendent about it, it would not stand up as a work of art. It would be brutality porn.
Take that most famous picture of slavery, the scarred photo of a slave's back. The picture's power derives not just from the scars, a record of his mistreatment, but also from his uprightness and strength. There would be nothing transcendent or beautiful in it were it a photo of a man reduced to nothing. It would not be art.
Similarly, the photo of the Chinese man in front of tanks in Tienanmen square is not just about the brutality of communism, but also the strength of the individual. If the photo was merely of a man crushed under a tank, it would scarcely be art. At best it would be journalism, but more likely it would be mere violence porn.