Algorithmic Beauty: 10 Artists Pushing the Boundaries of Code
The following is a compilation of artists whose medium happens to be code. They are artists first and technologists second. Technology is used in the service of the art and not the other way around. Zach Lieberman summarizes this perspective succinctly. “When I create work, I don’t want people to point at it and say, “That’s dope software.” I want them to say, “That’s a beautiful idea.” With that here’s a list of 10 artists doing amazing things with code. They make me want to improve my technical prowess in the hopes that I can make better art.
GMUNK aka Bradley G Munkowitz
GMUNK aka Bradley G. Munkowitz is a bit of Renaissance man when it comes integrating art and technology. His roots are in computer graphics and visual effects, but his body of work had grown beyond the screen. GMUNK creates dark and mystical immersive experiences that center on the themes of metaphysics and our connection to technology. His experiential pieces include utilizing programmable lighting arrays, projection mapping, robotic choreography, cymatic-driven material reactions, full-spectrum photography, and motion-controlled cinematography. His client list includes Dolby, Audi, Infiniti, Adobe, Microsoft, Adidas and countless others (1).
I’ve always been a fan of GMUNK’s future forward interface designs for movies such as Oblivion and Tron but what I enjoy most is the programmed artwork and light projections choreographed with robotic arms such as Telestron and Technicontrol. It’s mesmerizing work that unfolds through time in a very smooth way. He choreographs robots with a fluidity that makes them feel more organic. The sheer scale and complexity of the works are otherworldly.
You can find more of GMUNK’s work here.
Zach Lieberman
I rediscovered Zach Lieberman’s work through his daily sketches. What I forgot is I’ve found him once before through the EyeWriter project. The EyeWriter project was a fantastic way to use code to enable the creativity of a street artist who lost all mobility in his limbs. Lieberman and team with the support of The Ebeling Group built software that would allow a graffiti writer TEMPTONE, who is paralyzed ALS, use his eyes to be able to create art again through eye tracking.
Lieberman creates eye-catching visual oddities through his various code experiments. He makes creating art with code look less daunting as it only takes a few lines of code and a slight change of variables to create different generative permutations.
Some of Zach’s AR experiments can be found below:
Zach’s Animations Using OpenFrameworks:
You can find a breakdown of Lieberman’s daily sketching process here.
His perspective on coding as a creative act is an important one to me personally. Thinking about each piece of code not as a demo but as a poem. The idea that there something expressive in the act of programming opens up the possibilities of code as a creative tool. As Lieberman puts it himself. It’s not about the technology it’s about the idea. Writing code is in service of making the art. ‘I believe that the projects should never be about the technology. Technology should always be in service of the idea. The idea should be something that is poetic or that tells us about what it means to be human. When I create work, I don’t want people to point at it and say, “That’s dope software.” I want them to say, “That’s a beautiful idea.”
Lieberman started in printmaking by studying in a traditional BFA program but would later attend Parson’s to study creative technology. He would then go on to collaborate with his professor Golan Levin on numerous commercial projects. As a long time adjunct professor he liked interacting with students and getting their unique perspectives, but once he became a full-time professor, he realized he didn’t want to be involved in the formal education system and formed the School For Poetic Computation with some friends. The school operates more like an artist residency than a coding school. Zach is sensitive to not only the individual creative process as part of the curriculum but how students collaborate as well. IE. Don’t stay behind the computer, get up and do group activities, go outside to gather inspiration, as a group can’t foster collaboration through projects alone. (2)
He is also the creator of the open source creative coding language OpenFrameworks. Expressly made to help artists create visual works through code.
You can find more of Zach Lieberman’s work here. But I strongly recommend following him on Instagram.
Philipp Schmitt
The German-born, Brooklyn based designer/artist Philip Schmitt’s focus is on the use of technology to question the nature of work. Specifically creative work in the digital age. His explorations illustrate potential future implications of technology. His practice includes generative design, speculative design, data visualization, machine learning, photography, and filmmaking. Schmitt is currently doing his MFA at the New School in New York.
Below is a small sampling of Schmitt’s projects I’ve found interesting:
Camera Restricta is a connected camera that uses GPS to identify how many images were taken at a specific place. If hundreds of people have taken photos at the same location, the camera doesn’t allow you to make the same shot. The camera is expertly programmed to restrict the ability to take shots others have already. You need to find a new location and shoot something genuinely original to get the camera to work. It’s an interesting take on the amount of mimicry we see on Instagram when it comes to popular landmarks and location-specific photographic memes. Schmitt questions the nature of a photo in a world where we have a visual barrage of similar imagery from our various social media feeds.
Another project of Schmitt’s I’m fond of is his use of automated scripts to create photo books. The algorithm scrapes various image feeds, produces a set of image selects, then triggers another script to layout all of the photos in Adobe’s InDesign producing a final photo book. The results are stunning. Who’s the better curator? Man or machine?
Schmitt’s Human Element Inc. takes micro-tasking to a new level. Micro task outsourcing popularized by platforms like Task Tabbit, fiverrr and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, have broken down work into such tiny parts that they can be distrusted across many individuals. Schmitt created a wifi connected kiosk at a bus station where people can use their idle time to complete online tasks for others. Turning public idle time into another opportunity to be productive and earn extra money. Definitely an interesting take on the gig economy.
His current graduate research thesis involves the comparison of machine learning art with the Surrealist automatism technique. (3)
You can find more of Philip’s work here.
Mark Dorf
Mark Dorf explores the dualities between natural and urban landscapes, the physical and the virtual. He combines photography, digital media, and sculpture to examine the influence of the information age on our sense of place whether urban or natural. His aesthetic is what lured me into his work.
Dorf’s Translations Monograph published by Aint-Bad contains two series of works, Emergence and //_PATH. Both combine two of my favorite creative disciplines, photography, and infographics. Emergence was created when Dorf undertook an artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado. At the time he assisted ecologists and biologists in the field while creating his own works. The scientific process had a direct impact on Dorf’s work. His Emergence project explores how we collect and interpret information. Both science and art are abstractions of reality. Both are a transformation of sorts. Dorf used data points in his photographic explorations to create infographics and 3D forms to illustrate this transformation and then reapplied them to the original photographs. His process includes combining programming with process along with Photoshop, 3D rendering, and After Effects to bring the different elements of his compositions together. (4)
Emergence
//_PATH
You can find more of Dorf’s work here.
Joshua Davis
Out of all the folks on the list, I’ve probably followed Joshua Davis the longest. Back in the day, I think I started using flash because of him. I know I had a copy of Flash to the Core to learn how to sketch with flash. I’ve picked up a lot of from him since then big and small. On a bigger scale using processing and his hype framework to create visuals and on a smaller scale using simple techniques such as using favorite photos and downsampling them to generate color palettes.
A way to describe his work best is developing algorithmic systems that create art. In other words generative visuals. David considers himself to be more of a designer since he takes on client work. He’s produced visuals for Deadmau5, Phantogram, Squarepusher, Zola Jesus, Facebook, BMW, and Adobe.
Some of my favorite work from Davis would be the the following:
You can find more of Davis’ work here.
Rafael Rozendaal
The New York-based Dutch-Brazilian Net Artist Rafael Rozendaal’s mantra is the accessibility of art. Each of his net art pieces lives on their own domain to make them feel like completed works. If they don’t live as distinct entities as Rozendaal puts it, “they just become a series of files no one ever looks at.” (5). He doesn’t like the obstacles and elitism of the traditional gallery system. Rozendaal feels like once an art piece is bought by an individual collector, it stops being shared with the world. He favors the digital medium, not only because of his creative preference. He went to art school and studied painting, photography, etc. but his ability to share his work far and wide through the web. Collectively his websites have 60 million views. He sells his net art websites to collectors, which essentially means they buy the domains that art resides on. The collectors act as benefactors in keeping the work alive online, so others can still enjoy it.
Another key theme of Rozendaal’s is simplicity. The conceptual part of his work is where all of his efforts go. He tries to capitalize on the native technology of the web browser and uses simple vector graphics and programming that isn’t a drain on computing power and browser capabilities. Which allows the work to be viewed by a wider audience. The simplicity also applies to his daily life. He doesn’t like the idea of getting a studio and hiring assistants as it’s more things to worry about and by using the web as his medium it keeps him mobile as well. It affords him maximum time to think about what pieces to create versus managing a studio. He also hates stuff. He’s definitely the digital nomad’s artist. Rozendaal can program and sometimes does for his pieces but also collaborates with a developer to be able to pull some of his works off (6).
Rozendaal even turned surfing the web into part of his creative practice. He built a chrome browser extension that converts web pages into colorful abstract works of art. After hours of browsing the web, he archives the pages viewed and then curates the best compositions to create tapestries from. This is how he’s built a physical art practice. Converting his digital activities into physical manifestations of art.
Some of my favorite works include:
You can find more of Rozendaal’s work here.
Kyle McDonald
Los Angeles based Kyle McDonald’s interactive pieces revolve around relationships and relationships as mediated through technology. He’s an educator at heart so all of his work is available via GitHub. McDonald is also a key contributor to the openFrameworks creative programming language. Unlike the rest of the folks on this list that predominately leverage Processing to create art McDonald relies on Zach Lieberman’s openFrameworks.
Some of his notable projects include Trading Faces, his augmented hand series (done in collaboration with Golan Levin), Social Soul, and FaceOSC for which he was interrogated by the FBI.
Sharing Faces
In Sharing Faces, McDonald created a digital mirror but instead of reflecting back the person in front of the digital mirror the screen would reflect a different person back conducting the same pose. The project was worked on between teams in Korea and Japan with the idea of bringing both countries closer together by reflecting back people from the other country. The subjects would pose, then the system would use visual recognition to look through a database of existing poses to return the appropriate image.
Social Soul
Social Soul, done in collaboration with Lauren McCarthy for the TED conference creates an immersive environment that allows others to experience what it’s like to physically be inside someone’s social stream. Social media data is displayed in 360 with screens, mirrors and speakers arranged across the room. The kaleidoscopic visual set of data reflected off of multiple walls. Once someone walks into the experience, it starts with their social media profile being projected and reflected across the room. As the system learns about the person inside the experience, it uses an algorithm to match them with other TED attendees and speakers based on their social streams. Social media “soulmates” that are matched each receive a tweet to encourage them to connect and chat after the conference based on similarities and interests.
pplkpr
Another project also done in collaboration with Lauren McCarthy was an app called pplkpr that used an algorithm to auto-manage your relationships. Using a smartwatch, it monitors a person’s physical response to the people around them and optimizes their social life for happiness by recommending which people to keep in their lives. Essentially outsourcing relationship management to an algorithm.
You can find more of McDonald’s work here.
Casey Reas
Casey Reas along with Ben Fry created the open source programming language called Processing, which a large portion of digital artists use. Reas’ primary focus is generative art, and codes to create installations, prints, static objects and motion graphics. Reas is an artist and educator who currently teaches at the UCLA Design Media Arts Lab in Los Angeles (7).
His fascination with art started with a Calvin Tomkins book and has continued ever since. He has a sincere appreciation for artistic practice. Processing wasn’t made as a general use coding framework. It was made with an art first mentality and is informed by design and art education. According to Reas, “ Processing uses programming to explore form, color and drawing first, then photography, typography, interaction, and motion. This is the reverse of a programming class, where learning how to program is the end goal. With Processing, we’re exploring visual media, aesthetics and choreography through writing code. Processing is specifically inspired by the classic teachings of Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, Armin Hoffman, Emil Ruder, Karl Gerstner, and Wassily Kandinsky. (8)”
Since I love Casey’s aesthetic, it’s hard for me to pick a small number notable projects. The following are recent projects that caught my interest of late.
You can find more of Reas work here.
Marius Watz
The Oslo/New York-based Marius Watz, exploits code to create unintentional beauty that arises from randomness and glitch. Watz believes accidents are sometimes more interesting than the first intended consequences. He’s a big proponent of staying away from standard algorithms in producing his visual works. He feels that leveraging algorithms that have already been used by others create familiar and generic visual tropes. In Watz words, “A standard algorithm is just a found form, a preset structure producing preset results.” To push the creative needle to create unique digital artworks, novel algorithms are required. He’s even gotten into it on Twitter with the data artist Jer Thorp of the Office of Creative Research on the matter. His works are heavily influenced by his research in mathematics, and his interests biomimicry and architecture. Watz creates software art systems that abstract abstractions. He also plays with making the digital more tangible through algorithmically created sculptures he 3D prints (9).
You can find more of Watz’s work here.
Tim Rodenbroeker
I first found German-based Tim Rodenbroeker, through one of his sites, Crazy Cool Developers. The site posts challenges for other designer/developers to create alternative interface designs. I’m attracted to Tim’s body of work not only because he creates generative art but because he also creates interface designs and apps that generate designs. In other words online design machines.
He created a custom app that allowed a record label, Tonboutique Records to generate an infinite number of covers without ever having to leave their corporate design system. The number of digital releases increased rapidly, and the need to produce an exponential amount of album cover designs did as well. Tounboutique Designer allows the record label to create as many designs as they’d like without the need of starting from square one every single time.
His processing animations used on visual projections are also captivating. “Flow” is a short film that shows the motion of sinewave algorithms in a three-dimensional space.
Rodenbroeker 3D generative portraits that use data points from the actual image files are also aesthetically appealing.
You can find more of Tim’s work here.
References
- Munkowitz, Bradley G. “Information.” .Www | GMUNK, gmunk.com/Information.
- Essmaker, Tina. “Zach Lieberman on The Great Discontent (TGD).” The Great Discontent, 22 June 2017, thegreatdiscontent.com/interview/zach-lieberman.
- Schmitt, Philipp. “Philipp Schmitt.” Office of Philipp Schmitt, philippschmitt.com/.
- Japp, Charlotte. “The .GIF Mountainsides And Internet Landscapes Of Mark Dorf.” Creators, Creators, 17 Oct. 2014, creators.vice.com/en_us/article/ez5zzp/the-gif-mountainsides-and-internet-landscapes-of-mark-dorf.
- “Rafaël Rozendaal’s Liquid Websites.” Rhizome, 9 Oct. 2013, rhizome.org/editorial/2013/oct/9/rafael-rozendaals-liquid-websites/.
- Stosuy, Brandon. “Rafaël Rozendaal on Streamlining Your Process.” — The Creative Independent, 17 Apr. 2017, thecreativeindependent.com/people/rafael-rozendaal-on-streamlining-your-process/.
- Morey, Anthony. “Did You See It? Wait, Now It’s Gone: Casey Reas’ Generative Art at ACADIA 2014.” Archinect, 3 Nov. 2014, archinect.com/features/article/112570077/did-you-see-it-wait-now-it-s-gone-casey-reas-generative-art-at-acadia-2014.
- Desktopmag.com.au. “Interview: Casey Reas | Desktop.” DesktopMag, 21 Feb. 2013, desktopmag.com.au/features/interview-casey-reas/.
- Watz, Marius. “All Your Vectors Are Belong To Us — Artist Statement.” Marius Watz | News, 7 Mar. 2014, mariuswatz.com/2014/03/07/all-your-vectors-are-belong-to-us-artist-statement/.
