The concept of the project E-volver (created in 2006) is to have humans introduce the concept of randomness. It is a software that has an “image breeding machine” that a human “gardener” can collaborate with in order to create a piece of art. I am not completely sure how the algorithm works, but it seems that there are 4 animations that go into it and randomly interact with each other. Humans add another component of randomness to it by choosing an image to be left out of the algorithm until the next person comes by and chooses the image they wish to be left out. I thought that this project was really interesting in how it had an interactive component that was essential to the purpose of the piece.

Video of one of the final pieces of art.

Vladimir Kanic’s Random Generative Art

Generative art pieces based on randomness that I find admirable is Vladimir Kanic’s art pieces. The artist was inspired by chaos theory and explored using randomness as a structure of his works. The type, the genre and the content of his works were determined through observing and measuring random events. In order to do this, he devised a system which models randomness called ‘Magic Box’, which is twelve boxes being given to random art directors, and each one put a random number of randomly selected objects inside. Then, a group of random people placed the objects in the boxes a completely random and unorganized stash, and the artist chose one of the boxes to generate art out of it. He mainly created a film out of these random objects, generating patterns using various algorithms to create even more randomness in his pieces.

Jackson Pollock is on of my favorite artists and as he was mentioned in the description for this assignment, his work with ‘drip painting’ (splatter paint) is the definition of randomness in art.

It is hard to say what his intentions and feelings were when making these paintings, I’ve heard this style called ‘action painting’ because the artist can literally be just throwing paint at the canvas. In this way, the art can feel very emotional while also being completely random. There’s no real way/reason to predict where the paint will land on the canvas, but that is part of the emotion and feeling behind it.

I think Pollock’s work in this area is very admirable as it was extremely experimental but it caught on. I think it is amazing how even pure randomness can create beautiful artworks.

For this week’s looking outwards I looked at a project by Bogdan Soban, who uses random generative processes to create artwork. One example is Abstraction, done in 2005 by this random algorithm. I admire how every piece he makes with this process ends up looking completely different, in every way possible. The style and color palette are unique to each art piece. He uses Visual Basic to create the art, and uses a random number generator to calculate the seed start time for the generative process. I admire the algorithms he has created more than this specific piece, and am using it only as an example. He has created many different programs that create different style pieces, such as CREATOR, DISCOVERER, COLLAGE, and more. He even released these programs for free on his site, and below are two images showing the interfaces for two of these programs.

This simulation, created with Processing, utilizes randomness in simulating evolution. In each “generation,” 1000 creatures are created and the 500 that “walk” the furthest distance forward survive; new creatures are generated based on the survivors, and so on. I thought this was a fun and interesting application of randomness. Some of the early creatures are really derpy and funny, which is cute. But the really cool thing is seeing how much the creatures adapt after a couple of generations, and how certain “species” eventually dominate, ending up with one best optimized model. Since randomness is inherent in many parts of our everyday lives, it makes sense that randomness in computation, especially in experiments like this, can be very useful. I can see this type of prototyping being used in developing robot motion, finding the most aerodynamic shape for a plane, etc.

Isohedral III by Tyler Hobbs is one of his many algorithmic computational art that uses the concept of randomness. In contrast to his other art, I think Isohedral III is most interesting because it is clear on how he uses randomness of shapes, patterns, and colors. For example, one can see how all the shapes such as spirals, circles, and radial lines have repetitions, but when they are put together in random ways, they create random tile shapes throughout. Unfortunately, Hobbs does not share his source code to the public. His artistic sensibilities are shown from his color arrangement; the way the overall color scheme changes from blue, to red, to green is eye popping, and complement each other very well.

Source: http://www.tylerlhobbs.com/