Category: LookingOutwards-06

Looking-Outwards 06

Graham Murtha

Section A

The randomly generated computational art that I looked into this week is called the “Gallery of Randomly Generated Flames” by JWidlfire, an independent artist/blogger. This German artist uses T.I.N.A, a electronics design software by DesignSoft, to generate a series of randomly generated images that all include some depiction of a flame. The flames are generated through a series of random sin/cos waves, arrays, string art, and lighting effects, all with a black background. What I find particularly fascinating about this exhibition is the sequential nature of it, since we know that these 64 different images come from one identical code. The differences in each image are drastic, and yet at the sametime there is a strong visual acuity and pattern througout all 64 pieces. Even some of the flames that look almost biomorphic share commonalities with flames that appear gaseuous. By depicting all different variations in this series, JWildfire demonstrates to us how randomness can provide massive variety, while at the same time preserving certain biases or qualities.

Gallery of randomly generated flames

Looking Outwards 06: Randomness

Karlheinz Stockhauen: KLAVIERSTÜCK XI (1956)

I really liked KLAVIERSTÜCK XI by Karlheinz Stockhauen. Somehow, I felt that there is the usage of randomness in this piece of musical notes. There is a vivid pattern that Karlheinz follows, which I feel integrates randomness within his routine, which is really intriguing. However, there are hints of specific numbers too, such as he stops playing the notes which he has played 3 times. His notes are referred to as ‘pile of leaves’ which is owed due to the randomness of the notes, however, these notes are derived through constant trial and error and manipulated for musical composition means. I also admire the fact that all his notes read as a single piece produce a seriality within, which might come off as a meticulously planned structure. The structure of the notes is such that the other pianists are not able to replicate more than one piece of the whole thing. I do not know much about the approach Karlheinz took to generate these notes, as it seems randomly generated, but it commands attention as it makes complete musical sense when played together. Karlheinz’s intention is unclear in the final piece as no one knows about the origin of its motives, however, I am sure that for Karlheinz it is the manifestation of musical piece that he intended to portray.

Link

LO-05: The Dante Quartet

The Dante Quartet (1987) is an 8-minute experimental short film by Stan Brakhage. Produced over the course of six years, Brakhage hand-painted random but organized images on top of film with the aim of capturing various stages of hell. The Dante Quartet is divided into four sections: Hell Itself, Hell Spit Flexion, Purgation, and existence is song, comprising thousands of paintings – all of which can be characterized as emotive and intentional yet utterly random in their framing and order. As Brakhage splotches thick paint across his film, frames them, orders them, and edits them in a way that subverts the audience’s expectations (namely, the expectation that film must be explicitly narrative & played at consistent frame rates), he creates an experimental masterpiece that transcends both the canvas and the screen. The randomness within The Dante Quartet is visceral; watching the film as a spectator feels like witnessing a sort of organized chaos, taking us through the various stages of descension as Brakhage mapped out. That’s exactly what I admire about Brakhage’s work- through manipulating the random and rearranging them in a harmonious manner, Brakhage conveys emotion in an artful way that cannot be championed.

The Dante Quartet (1987), Stan Brakhage
Across the Universe: Stan Brakhage’s The Dante Quartet

looking outwards – 06

Robbie Barrat – AI paintings

AI Generated Landscape #6 – Robbie Barrat, 2018

Robbie Barrat, a Stanford researcher, has become a cultural phenom in the world of fashion and computer-generated art with AI-generated paintings fetching huge sale prices and his collaborating with renowned fashion brands like Acne Studio and Balenciaga. There’s something utterly jarring the moment your eye hits the “canvas” of a Barrat work; it’s quite other-worldly in the best sense possible–in the most computer sense possible. Just like how the Van Gogh’s and Monet’s of the art world cemented their place in cultural history through the inherent motif inculcated in their “style,” i.e., the stylistic elements that immediately separate their works from others in a purely aesthetic way (e.g., how their brush strokes in a particular way, how those patterns culminate, etc.). Weirdly enough, Barrat clearly puts in the effort in his program to be able to do something similar as it takes two weeks for such paintings to be generated, and when you look at enough of them, you can easily recognize the stylistic elements we could call Barratian. The beautiful drippiness, haziness, euphoric fuzziness, and heavy-like “brush-strokes” make for a hyperreal, thick, layered oil painting with textures that are impossible to create with real paint. His AI is able to do this by analyzing the thousands of painting examples Barrat has fed into its system in order to make these paintings. Those examples along with the AI guidance constitute the probability distributions of the program, but otherwise you can see how random the AI can get with how vastly different the paintings are aesthetically. I feel like Barrat truly made something special here and am very interested in seeing where he ends up in either the computer or art world.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-17/ai-made-incredible-paintings-in-about-two-weeks