Category: LookingOutwards-02

Ammar Hassonjee – Looking Outwards 02

An Interactive Wall That Moves According to Hand Movement

An interesting example of generative art I found online is a project called “Breathing Wall II” built in 2014 by Behnaz Farahi, an architecture professor at USC.

According to Farahi’s website, the “Breathing Wall” installation is made out of wood, PVC, and fabric, and its directly controlled by an Arduino that interacts with a Leap Motion system and depth camera to capture hand movement. The hand motions and signals are processed using DC systems and algorithms and then projected on the wall as contour lines, as well as the changes in the wall surface and color.

What I like most about this project is its exploration of the relationship between movement and the material, light, and color of the physical system. This installation gives its users the power to interact and impact their environment by allowing them to use intuitive controls like swiping and tapping to directly disturb the form and color of the wall, which contributes to a sensational experience. In my opinion, this art that is adaptive and involves activity from the user is the most compelling form of art.

A user interacts with “Breathing Wall II”.
Contour lines can be seen projected on the background of the wall.

Behnaz Farahi is known for her exploration in computational design, specifically with the use of interactive and motion based installations. Her work aims to connect human experience with structure as the focus is on how intuitive human motions and movement can impact a system. In addition to wall like installations, she has also designed interactive clothing and ceilings, which can be found on her website.

Kimberlyn Cho- Looking Outwards- 02

Alan Palomo, the lead singer of Neon Indian, uses self-generative art to digitally project his body movements on the screen during performances. I found this artwork interesting in its innovative nature and promising future of contemporary stage art. As technology continues to progress, generative art such as this would allow for an enhanced stimulating experience at not just concerts, but potentially other events as well.

 

Neon Indian performing “The Glitzy Hive” at Webster Hall;

Palomo engages his audience both visually and auditorily by capturing his movements through a motion camera and projecting the data in different geometric forms on a screen behind the band. He uses a Microsoft device called “Kinect” to capture the movements on stage. Although Kinect hasnt been commonly enjoyed by artists due to its abstracted projection, Palomo shows great appreciation for the symbiotic relationship it provides for his music and performance. In the past, Palomo has attempted incorporating visuals into his performances but has always felt a disconnect between his music and his performance. Hence, he worked with a friend to use audio synthesizers to track audio lines to manipulate various projections. The algorithm of Palomo’s generative art allow for an endless possibility of digital projections based on his music and performance.

Hyejo Seo – Looking Outwards 02

Mario Klingemann is a German artist who uses neural networks, codes, and AI to create generative art. He put images of portrait paintings from the 17th and 19th centuries into GAN (Generative Adversarial Networks), which then produces replica or newly generated portraits based on its own interpretations. GAN is a deep neural net architecture that consists of two nets, going one against the other; the generator and the discriminator. The generator takes in random numbers in order to create images. Then, those generated images are sent to the discriminator with a stream of images from a given dataset (i.e. images of paintings that were put in). The discriminator’s job is then to produce probabilities, a number from 0 to 1, where 0 represents authenticity and 1 represents fake.

Memory of Passerby I by Mario Klingemann

In Klingemann’s artwork, GAN isn’t simply duplicating old paintings (input). GAN decides its own aesthetic using a Tinder-like selection of what it finds aesthetic or not, and after studying its own interpretation of the basic features of a face, it produces an infinite stream of portraits that are rather uncanny and creepy. Personally, I always believed that art was a field AI could never achieve to learn, since there are no set of rules on how to express and create art. Creativity is unique to individuals since we all have different interpretation of the world and different ways of self-expression. Mario Klingemann’s pioneering artworks proved me wrong, and this is why they caught my eye. I am excited, at the same time, terrified to see what the future holds for the AI art.

Alec Albright – Looking Outwards – 02

Linienbild series of generative curves by Zdeněk Sýkora

The Linienbild series of generative curves by Zdeněk Sýkora is a group of works by a pioneer in the field of generative art. Zdeněk Sýkora, creator, began this work in 1975 and continued it for over two decades. The inspirational aspects of this series for me are the connection and evolution of its general aesthetic as time progresses. It is as if for each several years of time passing, the thicker the lines and the more simple yet bold the next installment of the series becomes. I suppose that the algorithm used to create these works may have included some time variable to implement this idea of physical bulk and growth as time progresses. It also appears that the algorithm may have randomized the color of the lines.

Sewon Park LO-02

One piece of generative art that I have been most inspired by is the AI-generated fashion designs by Robbie Barrat. As AI is the up and coming technology that is being tested in numerous fields of business and science, it was very interesting to see it in action in the realm of art.

AI generated clothing designs inspired by dataset from Balenciaga

Robbie Barrat trained an AI model with numerous data from Balenciaga including their look books, campaigns, and magazines. The system then used the given data to create a whole new collection of Balenciaga inspired clothing line photos. The design is notable for its striking resemblance to existing styles that the designers of the brand has created. However the touch of the AI driven mechanism gives the designs an eerie touch that helps the new works of art stand out.

Although the results were not completely ready for immediate production, this work of art points to a path of incorporation of sophisticated artificial intelligence data analysis for art and fashion. Robbie Barrat’s combination of scientific intelligence and artistic sense produces high-level pieces of work that will inspire a new era of digital art.

Link: https://www.fastcompany.com/90223486/this-ai-designs-balenciaga-better-than-balenciaga

Paul Greenway – Looking Outwards – 02

Architecture & Style is a project by Stanislas Chaillou that makes use of machine learning algorithms to explore the possibilities of generative design in the creation of architectural floor plans. Chaillou created a generation methodology for the plans using Generative Adversarial Neural Networks (GANs) that would learn from various precedents and then be able to compose adaptive floor plans based on different styles. The project shows clear artistic sensibilities as the program is learning from established architectural styles such as Baroque, Row House, Victorian Suburban House, & Manhattan Unit in order to then generate its own designs influenced by these styles. I found the project to be very interesting as it demonstrates how architectural practice can make use of new advancements in artificial intelligence.

Mari Kubota- Looking Outwards- 02

Unnumbered Sparks is an interactive community artwork made by Janet Echelman and Aaron Koblin. The artwork is a 745 feet sculpture in the sky controlled by visitors in real time using their smartphones. Unnumbered Sparks is essentially a large canvas projecting a Google Chrome web browser that is over 10 million pixels in size. The project was coded using a programming language called Go and the visuals were rendered with WebGL. WebSockets was used to connect the mobile devices to the sculpture. 

Unnumbered Sparks Janet Echelman and Aaron Koblin.

This project grabbed my interest because it is an interactive piece of artwork that requires the cooperation of a large group of people.  Aaron Koblin often creates interactive art and programs that utilizes data input from multiple people at a time. His works like Bicycle Built For Two Thousand, 10,000 Cents, and New York Talk Exchange are examples of artworks created with the collaboration of many people in real time. Interactive artwork maximizes potential when many people interact with it at the same time, which is why I admire this project. 

Jasmine Lee – Looking Outwards – 02

The project I admire is Silk created by Yuri Vishnevsky in 2012 (with music and sounds by Mat Jarvis). It is an interactive introduction to generative art, in that it allows users of the website to create their own images. The website uses the user’s mouse coordinates to create lines, which is then dictated by the program’s algorithm to manifest in a fractal-like manner. I’ve often used this website to relax in the past, as it is therapeutic to see the colorful lines of light dance across the page.

An image I created using only “black” in Silk, with the rotational symmetry set to “6”.

From what I can understand, the code takes the mouse’s coordinates and then uses them to generate lines from one point to the next. Then, that line is being duplicated and angled in a way that we get “silk” threads coming off of each main line. This produces a tangled effect similar to that of a silk web. The creator’s artistic sensibilities definitely come off in their algorithm, as there were specific choices that were made to create the weave-like effect of dancing light. This website would have given off a very different feeling if the creator had chosen to just use simple straight lines. Furthermore, the addition of rotational symmetry in the algorithm allows users to experience surprising effects as they move their mouse across the screen. Shapes that seem like stars, webs, hexagons, and flowers are prone to appearing as users explore. 

Another image created using Silk, this time with different colors being used.

Angela Lee – Looking Outwards – 02

“Artificial Arcadia,” created by Fragmentin in collaboration with KOSMOS architects in 2019, utilizes a 3D spatial contraption to raise questions surrounding how the natural, digital, and artificial shapes contemporary landscapes. The installation features white blankets propped up by poles—reminiscent of famous Swiss mountains—and changes and falls as the mountains themselves begin to melt. What I enjoyed about this piece was how viewers were able to interact with it and walk through the space; in my experience, incorporating space into artwork creates an immersive experience and a more profound impression on the viewer. From what I can guess, the program must calculate the heights of each pole at a given time, so perhaps there’s a section of code devoted to each pole. Also, the program should be making these calculations every few minutes, so there must be a part of the code that regulates the time frames in which these calculations are made and the code repeats itself in a loop. I think that with their narrative surrounding landscapes, the artists rightfully chose to program something that involved 3D space (supported with a 2D graphic) rather than creating an algorithm for 2D work; I really admire how they explored the intersection of coding and art in order to make an important statement about climate change.

Ankitha Vasudev – Looking Outwards – 02

This project by generative artist Kate Compton is called Flowers. It is an interactive genetic algorithm that was mainly created using JavaScript, as well as other algorithms to draw the flowers. I find this playable interesting because it incorporates a sense of complete randomness but also makes use of similar and repetitive geometrical shapes. 

A quick, non-interactive video depicting Flowers

In this project, the flowers have a 26-dimensional parametric ”genotype”, which generates L-system flowers in a continuous function. This continuity helped in creating a smoothly morphing animation. However, it is not fully continuous since the leaves and petals have been given integer values. This means that when the flowers animate from one form to another, there is some popping as leaves and petals appear.

A special characteristic of this project is that it uses a custom parametric generator, which controls color and shape. Initially, a variety of flowers are shown and the user can click on their favorite one. The selected “”favorite” flower spawns several closely-related and similar-looking plants and the user can continue to evolve their flower.

  • Initial variety of flowers
  • Variety after choosing the right-most flower

A link to the interactive version of Flowers can be found here.

An alternative version can be found here.