Student Area

CrispySalmon-Landscape

link: https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1486519 

The inspiration for my generative landscape is vaporwave . I mainly want to recreate this style(vibrant, color and atmospheric perspective) with generative coding. The mountain is generated from perline noise, and the color is randomized with a random seed. And the bird’s location is also randomly generated. A new landscape will be generated when ever it’s refreshed.

I think the randomized color is especially successful for this project. Some thing I wish to improve on is implanting this in a 3D space with WEBGL.

Hunan-Landscape

https://skyscape.glitch.me/

Initially, I intended on making a gigantic surreal landscape out of many balls, Inspired by the childhood memories of playing in big ball pits, I wanted to make a 3D, physics-enabled, interactive landscape where the user gets to drive around what is essentially a gigantic ball pit. But due to some mysterious and possibly quite stupid issues with the physics engine and Golan’s advice, I diverted to this idea — a simple poetic experience of chasing the sun. The user can control their movement to navigate through the rising ice particles in the pursuit of the unattainable ultimate destination.

Things I wish I had the time to add: background music, sound effects, better movement control (with acceleration,) pointer lock control (ability to look around,) generative terrain (below,) VR.

About the size requirement: the application adapts to your browser window size and aspect ratio (though not on resize, didn’t have time to add that, you’d have to refresh) so you can make any size and respect ratio you want by tweaking your browser window.

qazxsw-Lansdcape

Link

The idea is to create terraced fields, because I wanted to play around 3D spaces and this could be an easy start. I generated random numbers to locate the mountains and then used Perlin Noise to draw their shapes.

The biggest challenge for me is the time lag. In fact, I also explored the lighting and texture functions of p5js and was hoping to create more realistic pictures, but the code for now already takes about 10-15 seconds to generate each picture, so I was afraid to add more details. I think I might have called the function “noise()” too many times. I’ll try to increase the efficiency if I have time.

 

Solar-Landscape

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1486052

In this project, I wanted to play around with portraying the crowded buildings of a city, whether it’s from an aerial perspective or upfront. Having grown up living in the city, I wanted to also add an abstract and surreal element to my work that strays from the direct representation of buildings and instead reminds people of living in a city through the geometric play with negative space. I added hints of color that may remind one of the reflections from skyscrapers.

I really like the result of the generative landscape. However, sometimes the buildings can appear very detailed and noisy which I am still unsure about. I think that if viewed on a bigger screen, the more detailed generations will appear better. I struggled with the colors of the work and how much color I should add. However, I like the small hints of colors that make viewers focus more on specific areas of the work and the play with primary colors in the end.

spingbing-landscape

This landscape is meant to depict a bumpy, pimply, hairy back that the user appears to be flying over.

Link

Process: My personal criteria for this project were:

    1. I did not want to create a literal response to the landscape prompt.
    2. I wanted to instill some sort of feeling in the user, whether that be due to beauty or fear etc.
    3. I wanted to experiment with the WEBGL feature of p5.
    4. I wanted it to be dynamic.

I believe that was able to achieve my goals. This piece is still in the works – I want to add lights to actually showcase the 3 dimensional nature of this project. I am not sure if the lights will affect the “floor” – I would like to figure that out.

Sketch/Planning:

Still:

 

Sneeze-landscape

Link to the project

This generative landscape is supposed to evoke a peaceful and calm feeling in the viewer. As time goes by, the landscape eases in and out of night and day. Watching the landscape change colors is meant to reenact the experience of someone watching the scenery from noon until evening. It was generated using Perlin noise for the mountains and fractal trees.

I think that I experienced the most struggle from the lag that the code causes. I am not sure where the lag is coming from, but I was scared to do any other additions incase it would crash my window. I also had difficulty with having the landscape change while keeping the trees static. Since fractal trees are recursive with random adjustments, it was sort of difficult to keep them from changing every second. I was also short on time since I have midterms coming up this week, so I decided not to mess with it more.

qazxsw-Reading03

Question 1A: Fried eggs exhibit effective complexity, and I believe they sit in the middle of total order and total randomness. They have orders in the way they are cooked–“removed from their shells and placed into a frying pan and fry with minimal accompaniment” (from Wikipedia)–but the shape of each fried egg has certain randomness.

Question 1B: I believe the authorship of digital generative artworks belongs to humans. From what I see in digital generative artworks, it is humans who write the original code and make the final decision on the result generated by machines. Computers and other machines are only tools used by human artists. Besides, assigning authorship to machines will lead to legal issues when it comes to copyright protection.

Sneeze-LookingOutwards02

Instagram Post

I was drawn the the gradients in this piece. Although the shapes and the concept are simple, the blur effect adds dimension and makes it more interesting to look at.

Behance Post

This piece looks geometric yet organic and simple yet complex. These conflicting attributes makes me want to look at the piece more.

Instagram Post

I was intrigued by the scientific look of this piece. Although it was digitally generated, it has the look and feel of a medical diagram and looks to have the same complexity as something carefully crafted by a medical artist.

Sneeze-Reading03

Question 1A. The spotted lake in Canada exhibits effective complexity as its appearance falls under total randomness but its creation stems from order. The lake becomes spotted when the water level is low, and the walkways are caused by high deposits of minerals like magnesium sulfate, calcium, and sodium sulfate. Each of the pools has a unique hue, which is also due to the dissolving of minerals. I would say that the spotted lake falls in between order and disorder. The science behind the spots are caused by minerals and crystals, but the patterns they create on a macro scale look random and disordered. The complexity of the system is unknown to me since I am unsure of the specifics as to why these circular patterns form. There is not much research that describes this. I assume that many complex factors cause the formations, but it could be attributed to a simple scientific phenomenon regarding mineral deposition.

Question 1B. The Problem of Uniqueness
I think that the issue with uniqueness in digital generative art and digital art in general does diminish the “aura” and uniqueness of the piece. Once exclusivity is diminished, the appeal of uniqueness and something being special because of scarcity also decreases. This is not necessarily the most important aspect to an artwork as there are many other factors that make art “good art” that don’t rely on uniqueness. Although digital generative art does create a unique and original artifact rather than copies of digital work, the amount of uniqueness of the artwork is limited. Usually some small parameters are changed, some things are moved around, and colors or movement are altered, but the basic premise is the same. The limited range of the uniqueness of digital generative art makes the original and unique generated artifacts almost the same as copies of an artwork. I think that uniqueness is indeed an issue with digital generative art, but in our increasingly digital world, it is not a large issue.