LookingOutwards-06 – Page 5 – [OLD FALL 2018] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Nina Yoo-Looking Outwards – 06

Keith Powers -Art From Code – 2009

Math and geometrical shapes are intriguing to me because of their simple beauty. I admire this project for taking a single mathematical concept and then creating a whole new design from it by using a random function, when technically its not random in the first place because it was calculated. So this project was made from random lissajous webs. The lissajous curve is a graph of a equations that describe harmonic motions. Keith Powers would change the way the picture looked by changing the amplitude and frequency. Powers is able to express his art work by presenting how a simple geometrical graph is able to create a complex dark image that causes the viewer to wonder what the picture might have sounded like or how the webs are similar to a spiders web itself. The way he spread the contrasting dark points also causes your eye to go around the whole page and just make it pleasing to look at.

Dani Delgado – Looking Outwards 06

A piece in “The Spirit of Painting” exhibit by Cai – it is currently displayed in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Randomness is considered an almost imperative (CHECK THE WORD MAN) part of the creative process, whether it be through allowing one’s thoughts to run wild or through implementing actual forms of randomness into the process to create a random output. This second form of randomness can be seen clearly in the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, an artist who utilizes gunpowder to create his work.
His primary body of work manifests itself in two forms – fireworks that are set off according to his coded programs and controlled explosions on canvas – both of which have random outcomes in that there is no way to know what they will look like until the final product has been produced (this type of randomness is similar to weather in that you can expect what is to come but there is no specifics that are known).

A piece in “The Spirit of Painting” exhibit by Cai – it is currently displayed in the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. This work contains some acrylic underlays.

Cai, who had a background in fine art painting, began exploring gunpowder as a medium because of its connection to nature and how it creates art in an organic, non-sequential way. This method of working is very inspirational to me, mainly because it is so different from what I do; my process usually contains some randomness in the initial idea phase, but once it comes to a final product, I usually like to have full control over what my work will look like. So, to embrace the random and explosive nature of gunpowder and create art out of it is simply fascinating to me.

Youtube Video of his process:

His website: http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

LookingOutwards-06-Erin Fuller

I found this Looking Outwards prompt particularly difficult. Maybe it is just how I view life but I find it hard for anything to be authentically “random”. The work I finally settled on was “8-Corner” by Georg Nees, a German scholar who is commonly cited as a pioneer of computer art and generative graphics.

GEORG NEES8-CORNER / GENERATIVE COMPUTER GRAPHIC, 1960s “To produce the graphics, I used a drawing board controlled by a punch tape and a digital computer producing the pilot tape. Each graphic has random parameters. The program for each graphic... — “8-CORNER”, Georg Nees, 1960s

“Rule for 8-corner: Distribute eight dots inside the figure square and connect them with a closed straight edge line.” – Nees

This graphic composition was created using a drawing board controlled by a punch tape and a digital computer producing the pilot tape. How it is random is that, because each graphic repeats a generative fundamental operation, the redundancy produces a random parametric value of the graphic during the repetition.

ChristineSeo- Looking Outwards 06 – Section C

Photograph of the projector glitch in the dark room

Photography of tiles with mixture of a variety of exposure, speed, and frame rates

Photograph of a digital drawing that was “waved” back and forth

Ishac Bertran, an artist from Barcelona, focuses his work around the relationship between people and technology. There were digital drawings that were photographed in a dark room, with long exposure times. Randomness is shown through the rendering of imperfections and the asynchrony between the frame rate of the video signal and the refresh rate of the projector. He ran the Processing sketch and then photographed it after there was a random glitch from the computer monitor or graphics card and occasionally what was caught in between the digital and analogue mediums.

I thought it was very interesting how he used various photographic techniques such as exposure, speed, and frame rates to seek out the glitches. I especially thought that it was intriguing how the camera could capture these imperfections, while the naked eye could not. The random graphic glitches added a meaning to the artwork as it captured their unpredictable beauty. Originally, he was inspired by the aesthetics of physics and computation, which drove him to create this artwork; he wanted to make his digital drawings more meaningful. He also claims that he finds “beauty in complex systems that are driven by simple principles.” I wish that he would have experimented further, with even more various materials and mediums to capture these photographs.

https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/generative-photography-processing/

Lan Wei-Looking Outwards-06

The project Forms is an ongoing collaboration between visuals artists Memo Akten and Quayola. It illustrates how athletes’ body motions move in a creative way.

When the video just started, I didn’t notice the human body in it and I thought it was all about visual effects. But after I saw the body motions in it I felt the great power and creativity of the artwork. The blurring between real life experience and the abstract effect interpretes body movement in a new way, which fascinates me the most, implying that body is part of the environment and every movement will have invisible impact to the surroundings. Randomness of the elements plays an important role in achieving the effect. The elements in the video are throwed about randomly but acturally they are in some ways controlled by the pathway of the body. So the randomness is not pure, containing certain level of logic.

Forms

Looking Outwards 06 – Min Lee

Generative Art is art in which there is a level of autonomy that the artist is not in direct control of. More specifically, in generative art, the artist purposefully produces a canvas with certain blank spots that can be generatively filled in and still produces a wonderful outcome within the artist’s vision.

In this particular work, the basic concept that the artist is using is the mathematical concept of B-splines, where a smooth spline is drawn through control points without passing through these points itself. By moving the points, or nodes, the splines follow the nodes, creating an erratic yet smooth picture. Hoff, the artist for this piece, used randomness to change the positions of the nodes. From this piece, I could sense the artist’s intentions of creating a beautiful transitional piece that showcases the calm becoming the erratic.

Source: https://inconvergent.net/thoughts-on-generative-art/

Vicky Zhou – Looking Outwards – 06

Karina Smigla-Bobinski is an intermedia artist that focuses on new media and digital art. One of her more well-known works, “ADA”, is an interactive kinetic drawing installation that produces random strokes due to the nature of how this project was constructed and is meant to be interacted with. ADA is a enormous transparent, helium sphere with charcoal stumps attached all along the outside. This sphere is placed in the context of an expansive, all-white room, in which the user can engage with the sphere by pushing it around. As a consequence of such interaction, random black strokes are drawn, strewn, dotted, and created across the white walls.

Although Karina created ADA with precise measurements and specific intentions — crafting of the helium sphere, strategic placement of the charcoal stubs, and size of the room — the result of her work becomes random — marks created by the public.

Alessandra Fleck – Looking Outwards – 06

To explore the realm of randomness in computational art, I decided to look into a project that integrates traditional craft alongside digital work. Random Number Multiples is a limited edition artwork collection created by data visualization artists Jer Thorp and Marius Watz. The collection seeks to integrate analog work alongside the programming, digital aspect. This hybridization of techniques adds a subtle touch of art into the randomization of data. As the artists claim, modern day art viewed on the computer can have a cold essence to it. When bringing that digital art onto a printed medium however, the effect can be more sensual, despite its digital randomness. This idea of digital randomness being combined with analog mediums to evoke an emotion is something I think is very interesting. As lots of data is being filtered into our lives on a daily basis, it is neat to see such data being presented as “art” where the randomness acts as an expression of the sort of tension and branching of the different data sets interacting with one another.

[the image above depicts a finished data visualization art piece after undergoing a post process in analog medium]

[below is how they print out the data visualization art pieces and prepare to work on in a more traditional medium. The different colors come from the different paths and types of data being visualized.]

[The above image looks into the fine detail of the printed work. Some other completed works done by the artists can be seen below ]

There is not much said in how the artists generate the “randomness” in their work algorithmically. It can be speculated however, that there might exist some sort of tree data structure to help determine the different branches of the work (Similar to the snag tree method shown below).

The creative sensibilities of the work really rely on the means by which the artists utilize traditional methods of visualization with digital methods. The entire hybridization of the work is important in how the artists author their creativity.

Shirley Chen-Looking Outwards-06

Orbital is a project generated by J. Tarbell using computational method. It is composed of a random collection of particles operating on one single rule: randomly choose another particle in the system and orbit it with a constant radius and same velocity. From the beginning, there is one single root particle instantiating at the center of the canvas, and then all other particles brought into the system fall into orbit at some level.

Looking at Orbital System From Far Away

The particles initially start with a fast velocity. Gradully they slow down so their position, orbit path, and connection can be clearly represented.

System of 500 Orbital Elements Exposed over 400 Years

system of 500 orbital elements exposed over 400 years

This project is interesting and demonstrate the role of randomness played in computational art. Although the selection of particles and the position of orbit generated are random, the one basic rule that is not changed is that the orbitals have a constant radius. Overtime, various patterns and shapes can be created and such randomness allows more space for creativity and visual representation. Randomness itself, when combines with time, might be able to generate many unexpected results.

http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/orbitals/indexB.php

Jenny Hu — Looking Outwards 06

Zach Lieberman is an artist and programmer that specializes in computational and graphic art. I’m especially drawn to the pieces below for his beautifully generated compositions that blend random color juxtapositions beautifully. In terms of how it was generated, I assume the placement, colors, and direction of each shape are randomly generated each time, while the key visual qualities remain consistent in the algorithm— the diffusion rates of colors, the shapes of each point, and the spacing of the stripes in the composition.

The ability to visually balance these elements despite the randomness is what I absolutely love about these compositions. The randomness is used with a purpose that is artistically driven and envisioned.

Find this work’s post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BlrG6iZg8Ow/?taken-by=zach.lieberman