Looking Outwards 2 – Generative Art

Drawing Water
By David Wicks, 2011

http://sansumbrella.com/works/2011/drawing-water/

“Drawing Water is a constructed landscape shaped by the relationship between where water falls and where it is consumed within the United States.” It is an interactive, animated map that uses data to map the amount of rainfall and where it fell to where it is consumed. So the more water a city uses, the stronger its pull.

What I admire about this project is how it is not only informative, but also beautiful to look at. It uses data collected to tell a story of the urban pull in the United States, and how much water travels from where it is fallen to where it is consumed, especially in the West Coast. I have always admired data visualization.

As for how the algorithm is generated, it reminds me of a code I used on an architecture project called a flow script, which uses length and frequency of lines to map the flow of a surface, using longer lines to indicate steeper topography. However, it is different in this sense, it takes the data of each location point and it moves towards where it is consumed, and the length is based on the amount of rainfall. Then as rainfall moves further, it becomes desaturated, turning from blue to black.

I think the creator’s artistic sensibilities are manifested in the algorithm based on the colors they used, line thicknesses, and shapes. There are variables in how many lines, and how thin the lines are. Wicks was able to use many thin lines that were of soft colors to make it almost seem like a watercolor painting. The artist makes it feel very sensible and soft.