I know a lot of artists often use randomness in their work, but I don’t think I have seen computational randomness art. After looking through some stuff, I stumbled upon this artist, Linyi Dai. She is a graduate of RISD and currently is a designer at Ogawa Depardon Architects. Her work for Coding Architecture features this really cool growth of a spherical infrastructure. I love the way that it grows at the same time to show the randomness that comes out of each of the four spheres. I am not completely sure what the coding background of this is, but I do know that a lot of architects employ randomness into their practice. You can see the architectural background in this piece as it is pretty structured and seems relatively calculated. Overall, I think Dai’s work is really cool and I would be extremely interested in seeing more types of computational randomness artwork.
This software is a facial recognition program that produces art and faces through randomly generated noise. The program takes randomly generated noise and tries to create a face using polygons and the generated noise it receives. The software was developed by a man named Phil McCarthy. He wanted to use the program to abuse and play with pareidolia which is the tendency of humans to find faces in everything they see. Because of this, he chose to name the program “Pareidoloop”. What I admire about this project is the fact that a machine that doesn’t initially know what a face looks like tries to draw a face using random data. It’s almost like making something out of nothing. The project both plays with the computer and our tendencies as humans.
I chose the randomness project done by Linyi Dai, an architecture student at RISD, after seeing her work posted on an article about randomness in computation. As seeen from the video above, the project is simple as it generates what appears to be a series of random lines and shapes over time. In the written portion of her project, she talks about how she opted for pseudo-randomness, creating an unpredictable interaction between the patterns she’s already derived. I thought what she had written about randomness, stating that it was used in a generative manor to overcome the creative limitations of the creator, was really interesting and meaningful. Initially, I didn’t have much of an interest or understanding of why randomness was used so often, but following her comments I can see why.
Charlotte Dann is an artist interested in using p5.js to create a more exciting visualization activity of hexagonal Game of Life. She found that establishing the data structure for hexagons and defining how they relate to one another was really difficult in the beginning. With the use of random variables in her code, she strived to create a clustering effect across the hexagons. I like how she showcased her whole range of exploration in her project, where she played with coded, linear agents to random agents, describing how they aligned or misaligned with her design intentions. In terms of the randomness in Game of Life, she coded for the ‘ants’ to leave a trail behind it, moving shapes either left, right, or go straight ahead. She also established relationships between this randomness and their aim for emptier areas on the canvas through this algorithm. In the final form, Dann discovered over 1416 possible combinations for every hexagon, and she played with how she could represent her aesthetic sensibilities through every iteration.
This week I chose a project by a company, “Spacetime Coordinates”. It is an art project that brings a personalized map of the positions of the planets at the calculated day of one’s birth. The company extracts NASA data and algorithms to compute the random positions of the planets to create a customized print. The company has created minimal style posters in the colors of dark blue, black, and white. I think what is really great about this project is the fact that no two date entries provide the same map. It is amazing how you can plug in a random date and see the snapshot of the solar system of that day, visualized into a minimal map. The style of the posters are very simple, with thin colored curves resembling orbits and small circles representing planets. The company has also created 3D printed metal casted sculptures which present personal planetary information. All of their works seem interested in displaying unique and personalized planetary positions, and are all made in a minimal style.
Soban is a generative artist that experiments with different computer programs to make algorithmic art. His initial inspirations came from his admiration of machines. He deeply respected the machines’ capability to process things better than humans and therefore wanted to gift them creativity. Utilizing the advantage of algorithmic programming, Soban started to create these randomized art.
To make this “Fire Valley” piece, Soban used solar systems to disturb the generative algorithms in his program. He wanted to give more randomization to the piece in order to truly transform the solar energy into his artwork. I admire Soban’s choice of algorithm. It is unusual to actually bring in the source of what he wants to depict to govern the artwork. In this case, solar energy successfully gave the product life. His passion is very much respected.
Would you install a Facebook App that Randomly Deletes Your “Friends”?
Friend Fracker (2013) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is an API art that randomly unfriends 1-10 people on your Facebook account. I admire how such a simple algorithm based on randomness could help you reveal who your true friends are, and serves as a larger commentary on human relationships in the digital age. The algorithm is elegantly simple, randomly select 1 to 10 friends in your Facebook account, and delete them. Additionally, an added layer privacy is also added for Friend Fracker uses Facebook’s standard authentication and security service, therefore it doesn’t track your password nor private information. Your deleted friends wouldn’t know that you unfriend them, and neither would you.
Nicholas Sassoon is a French-born artist who currently lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. He uses early computer imaging techniques to create his works that demonstrate the possibility of expressing dimensions of the physical realm through digital images.
Sassoon’sDriftis a work with an oddly celestial quality that captivated me. The random alterations of the elements create a fascinating effect that displays a sense of motion. Ultimately, the random movements of the visual elements create a simultaneously mesmerising and unsettling effect. They separate and merge together to create scenes of nature or those that convey a sense of narrative. Additionally, the auditory element enhances the overall experience of the piece.
(Example of a minuet created by using Mozart’s K.516f.
Title: K.516f
Creator: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Year of Creation: 1787
Link to the Article: http://www.pianonoise.com/Article.dice.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musikalisches_W%C3%BCrfelspiel
Link to the Bio of the Artist: https://www.biography.com/people/wolfgang-mozart-9417115
K.516f is a minuet composed by Mozart in 1787 according to his own version of Musikalische Würfelspiele. Musikalische Würfelspiele (translated: musical dice game) describes any type of game / means of composing musical pieces that involves rolling one or more dices to randomly generate the notes or measures, and it was popular among the composers in the 18th century Europe. It was supposed to offer a fun alternative way of composing, even for the amateurs who were not familiar with the basic rules of composition. Its exact origin or inventor is unknown, but the very first example dates back to 1757, when Johann Philipp Kirnberger wrote Der allezeit fertige Menuetten- und Polonaisencomponist (German for “The Ever-Ready Minuet and Polonaise Composer”). Other famous versions include the ones by C.P.E Bach (J.S. Bach’s fifth son).
The most well-known version of Musikalische Würfelspiele and its product were published by Mozart in 1787. Composition K.516f included the instruction of the game and the pres-made measures to choose from.
Here’s how Mozart’s version works:
There are 176 pre-written measure to choose from if one is to compose a Minuet; 96 if Trio. Two six-sided dices are then rolled to determine which measure comes next. Using the instruction sheet, one could determine which dice roll corresponds to which measure put next.
It’s impressive how the composition sounds so put together and well thought-out even though the measures are randomly arranged. Maybe it’s just Mozart’s brilliance that he was able to compose individual measures that would sound coherent no matter how they are arranged.
13/9/65 Nr. 2 (Hommage à Paul Klee) by Frieder Nake is said to be one of the most frequently cited earliest phase of computer art (mid-1960s). I admire how the work plays with the fine line of whether it was hand-crated or computer-generated, which makes the work engaging and intriguing. According to Programm-Information PI-21 where Nake describes the processes involved in generating this artwork, he lists all of the random elements of this work: width of horizontal bands, “buckling” of horizontal bands from left to right, vertical lines of triangles, size (radius) of the circles. It is also intriguing that this piece of work contains numerous variables that are randomized, yet because of the constancy of the general ‘rules’ (having bands of horizontal rules with an array of vertical bands periodically, etc.), the artwork maintains its intention and does not seem utterly random.
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