LookingOutwards-02

Looking Outwards 02: Generative Art

The project I have chosen for this blog is Dr. Woohoo’s “Ribbons” painting application/work. This work combines abstract art with a semi-autonomous brush that attempts to follow the artist’s gestures. While following the painter’s movements, the application produces ‘brushstrokes’ that sample the colors from an image source. The results of this algorithm are unique and colorful tubular shapes that create intense depth and movement on the canvas. I admire this project because of the incorporation of previous works in the production of new ones. The original idea for the project was to figure out a way to “combine previous vivid abstract images [Dr. Woohoo] generated” as the color source for new generative art. The use of previous works adds a special element to any new piece that is produced, like a family line of art. This aspect is not apparent to the audience without explanation, but the color palettes of each piece are certainly notable. Some of the paintings produced with this application are extremely vivid, others more muted, but all of the schemes work beautifully together. Additionally, the patterns on many of the tubular painted objects illicit images of snakes, which is really interesting given the unnatural method of production. This result is a great example of how nature inspires and influences programming.

website: DrWoohoo.com

https://www.drwoohoo.com/portfolio/semi-autonomous-brushstrokes

While the concept seems simple enough, the thing I admire most about Dr. Woohoo’s work is the dynamic nature of his generations.
There seems to be a level of randomness to his work, but there is also a sense of intentionality in the strokes, almost as if they did it by hand.
Perhaps the most impressive to me is his choice of colour palette, as they are mostly non-standard yet visually appealing.
They use a combination of vibrant and neutral colors that somehow don’t clash.
While I’m not sure exactly how the brushes work – I imagine they work somewhat similarly to Sketchbook custom brushes – I think there is a component creating an illusion both of direction and depth of movement.
Generative art seems to be the best way for Dr. Woohoo to express their vision – they seem to want to combine the ideas of DNA/RNA with art and vivid colours, and the generative art medium seems perfect.

LO: Generative Art

Refik Anadol’s “Machine Hallucinations” represent his most recent synesthetic reality experiments using projections.

Refik Anadol’s “Machine Hallucinations” is an generated A/V Performance and Installation art that uses Archive and Machine Learning algorithms to project 100 million photographic memories of New York City. The installation provides such cinematic experiences by multilayering and generating a vast, dynamic visual archive of the city. I found it absolutely intriguing how Anadol used artificial intelligence machine to produce photographs in motion to reflect the memories of the city. By creating a hallucinative imagery, it almost feels like another reality revealed in front of us. I also admire how the projection aspect makes even the audience like a part of the work as it illuminates and spotlights the people. In his work, Anadol attempts to represent the “reality, totality, and the depth of human imagination,” and unearth novel connections between collective consciousness and visual narrative using machine intelligence.

Reference: https://refikanadolstudio.com/projects/machine-hallucination/

LO: Generative Art

Memo Akten’s Simple Harmonic Motion #12 for 16 Percussionists at RNCM (2015) is a really interesting musical composition and performance piece. The rhythmic patterns are dictated by a computer, and communicated to the musicians through earpieces. While human tendency is to stay in time with each other, the cues cause each drummer to pay attention only to their own beats. This allows them to go in and out of sync as the program runs. I admire that Akten was able to create a performance that is straddles the line between what is music and what is simply noise. The intuitive emotional aspect of playing an instrument is seemingly stripped away as these drummers are simply an extension of the computer’s directions. I would be curious to see what would happen if a more complex and sonically pleasing piece were translated into this system. Sheet music and its digital counterparts can be seen as similar instructions, but this piece is unique in the way that the instructions are delivered. Rather than having written music and a conductor, the musicians do not see the bigger picture and can only rely on what they’re being told in the moment.

LO: Generative Art

A piece of generative art that I admire is “Differential Lattice” created by artist Anders Hoff. From a visual perspective, I think it is extremely beautiful. The small components coming together to create a very intricate lattice is very interesting. I also admire it because I am extremely interested in the process the artist had to go through to produce it. This course is my first introduction to code as well as computational art, and I think that it has been so interesting to see how the language of the code interacts with the visual art. I am just so curious as to how Hoff had to harness that code in order to create this very intricate piece. The artist said that they used Cython to produce this piece. When going into depth about his process, he talked about how he used a lot of differential meshes and systems to create the piece. It seems as though, there is a pattern of nodes being plotted, and the computer keeps using that program to create similar patterns and move throughout the canvas. I think that you can tell that the artist has an appreciation for additive pieces. In some of the ones I saw on their website, there was a start in the middle of the canvas, and then growth coming out from that point into the canvas.

https://inconvergent.net/generative/differential-lattice/

LO: Generative Art

This piece by Anders Hoff mimics the fracturing patterns that occur in brittle materials like glass or ceramic. The process by which this piece was created was by randomly creating new fractures from the tip of fractures that are already present. Without looking at the code, I think that Hoff probably made sure that the line of the new fracture started where the previous line ended but in a random direction and at a random length. I think that this piece is really interesting because it has a deeper meaning of fractures in materials and in social infrastructures and viewers could make up their own conclusions and theories on what the piece means rather than it being obvious and upfront. This piece was part of a larger collection that explores how simple algorithms and rules can have wildly complex and intricate results and I think that using generative art and coding to explore this idea is really unique and intelligent.

Artwork

Artist: Anders Hoff

Year: 2014

LO 02: Generative Art

Walk-Through Raster by Frieder Nakes stood out to be the most inspirational due to its visual exceptionality. Walk-Through Raster is a computer-generated image that was produced under two procedures. The first process is the drawing of white, blue, red, yellow, and orange marks by a calcomp plotter output device. The second process is the regeneration of the image through silkscreen. The most admirable aspects of this piece would be composition, color, and technique. Dynamic is demonstrated through varied line density. Some areas of the canvas are highly crocheted while other areas remain in simple forms. The spectrum of colors from dark shades of red and blue to lighter shades of yellow and orange create a distinctive pattern within the canvas. The technique of plotting color and varied lines with visual respectability is also considered highly admirable since the technique was unlike any other at its current time. Frieder Nake is renowned as the pioneer of computational art. He was a mathematician, computer scientist, as well as a generative artist. As an expert in computer programming, Nake generated mathematical algorithms combined with the plotter machine to create an abundance of genuine artworks like Walk-Through Raster. Plotter machines function to produce vector graphic drawings based on computer programming. Nake must have utilized the characteristics of programming such as randomness or repetition and its manifestation through plotter machines to create interesting artworks.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/frieder-nake-walk-through-raster-vancouver-version

Looking Outwards 2

Lately, I’ve been interested in NFTs and how they’ve changed the art market through generative digital art. NFTs are non-fungible tokens that resemble a piece of digital art (motion graphics, 3D models, video, illustration, etc) and are sold and traded with crypto — with one generative piece that sold for $7 million. Successful artists such as CryptoPunks and Pudgy Penguins have an artistic style that unifies their collection, yet are able to create thousands of unique works. Their work is generated by the blockchain to randomize appearances such as color and clothes: “NFT creators within the artificial intelligence generative art community are using algorithms and blockchain-based provenance to address issues of mercurial valuation and fraud” (Forbes). I am curious to see how long NFTs will last (whether they will be a fad or well integrated into the digital art market).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeorshimron/2021/09/08/the-nft-generative-art-movement-is-challenging-how-we-think-about-value/?sh=10cdb71578ae

https://opensea.io/

Looking Outwards 02 – Learning to see

“Learning to See” is an ongoing work by Memo Akten. The artist describes this work as using machine learning algorithms to reflect the way that human perception reconstructs the world around us based on our own beliefs and experiences rather than “accurately” representing the world around us. I think this is a really interesting idea for a project and that the “vision” of the machine learning algorithms makes for a powerful metaphor for the aritst to make his point. I also find the real time fluid interation between the image generated by the algorithm and the input objects inspiring. It is a really interesting hybridization of intuitive manual gestures and an algorithmic art making process. I don’t know a whole lot about Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), which is the type of algorithm being used in this piece. However, I do know that it has to be trained on a database of imagery which determines the sort of images that it creates. We can also asume that there is somewhere within the process a video feed is being fed into the algorithm to allow for the output to be manipulated in real time.

Learning to See (2017-)

LO: Generative art

This week, I chose Marius Watz’ work called ‘ABSTRACT01js’ created in 2010. I found this computational art piece very interesting because of it’s pseudo-random elements that are the underlying algorithm of the art. The composition of the piece when the mouse is pressed is random but is comprised of the same elements, making the shape and colors somewhat consistent. It’s really cool to think how something as technical as coding can be used to create such an organic and flowing piece; Watz did a really good job at projecting the abstract randomness in a complicated yet sensible way. To do this, my guess would be that he used probability distributions to induce randomness to get this kind of patter. The interactive aspect of this art is what stood out to me; random patterns are created when I press the mouse on the canvas, which is something we learnt to do in class.

Link to ‘ABSTRACT01js’ – http://mariuswatz.com/works/abstract01js/