CJ Walsh – Looking Outwards 06 – Randomness

The piece that I chose to focus on for this week’s Looking Outwards is by Georg Nees. He is considered a pioneer in the world computer art and graphics. While this piece is pretty simple, I enjoyed it for a variety of reasons. I like to sketch in a lot of my notebooks, and all of the lines remind me of the things that I doodle when I’m in class. Another aspect that really stands out to me is on their own, each of the small drawings would seem insignificant. But, when combined into the large grid with all of the other generated drawings, it creates a really intriguing image. It almost feels like a diagram of some kind of language or alphabet, which is cool.

In order to create this piece, Nees set random parameters for each graphic. The rules that he set was that eight dots would be placed inside the established canvas, and then they would be connected by lines into a closed edge shape. He states that, “The program for each graphic repeats generative fundamental operations so that the mere repetitions, the aesthetic redundancy, produce the random parametric values of the aesthetic improbability of the graphic during each repetition.”

It is interesting to think about how far computer graphics and art has come since Nees first created and presented these works. Looking back at this piece now, we see it as quite simple compared to the other forms you can create using code. At the time, this work was revolutionary. This piece conveys a sense of experimentation, which reflects exactly what Nees was doing with his work. It wasnt about creating an artistically beautiful work of art. It was a part of a larger experiment into the capabilities of programming. And even if this may not be considered high art, it is a cool piece to look at and one that I admire.