Generative Art

If you make art no one else can, you have no competition

After years of flirting with the idea of getting into generative art, and finding the process too complicated or time consuming for its worth, I have recently taken up in creating via the Processing language and Hype framework.

What caused the jump?

Two things. Joshua Davis’ helpful Programming Graphics I: Introduction to Generative Art course exists, and a friend let me know it exists. It’s funny how quickly one’s interest can re-emerge, when someone whose work for years you’ve enjoyed in a field is the one teaching you about it.

What’s generative art?

The general consensus is that Generative Art is work that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system.

An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist.

I liken this process to making a smoothie in a blender. We’re fully aware of the ingredients entering the mix, we’ve chosen them, but if we take a less-direct control of the process (focusing on the what but not the individual steps of the how), and allow the blender to work, we end up with something much more complex and rich than if we had to do it by hand.

Different blenders work with different options, but as long as we under stand that a blender blends, a mixer mixes, or a saw saws, what comes out is both unique to the options and tools used, and understandably what we still desired.

How I’m going about it

In my early usage I will be relying heavily on the Processing language and Hype framework. The possibilities are endless, there’s thousands of examples of strange and interesting places others have pushed their creativity, but I can already see the directions where what I want to do can (and will) go that exist outside those systems.

Code can create rigid pieces, a large part of its value is in reproducibility, just as painting by numbers will reveal no new shapes. But imagination and incorporating personal choice of supplies and techniques can create not only consistently interesting results but in a manner very personal to its creator.

My early learning in the field has been largely focused on fundamental aspects such as randomization, typography, and color manipulation. Using generative/automated systems for producing art that I can’t have made by hand, I should also (in theory) be more free of falling into creative ruts. As with anything that requires practice for improvement, there will be a natural tendency to revisit modes of work that are familiar, comfortable, and have been successful in the past, so this will be one area I hope to be on watch against.

This is a bold new world for me, not having to apply every pencil line or brush stroke by hand, and should be used for maximum productive output. I expect large amounts of time will be spent learning how to make things more tasteful and subtle, but like all new tools we learn to use, the first phase after discovery is always overuse.

Showing you and telling you

As I learn and improve I’ll be updating with not only new writing in this category but committing my code to a Github Processing repository I’ve created. The repository contains code sketches and ideas for what I want to do next, as well as a place to serve as a general set of self-documentation in case I need to leave and return to these studies in the future.

By making my learning and work files public they’re open for anyone to use. By keeping them public they’ll add a pressure to me to continue improving them as well as my understanding of what I’m attempting to create.

Black turtlenecks and cashing checks

Once I’m comfortable in my tools I’ll be able to further developer an aesthetic, ideology, statements of purpose. I’ll find a way to wrap it up in some grand overblown statement on what it all means, but for now I suspect you can expect more of how I’ve spent most of my life: looking at a glowing rectangle and moving my fingers over keys like some wizard casting a spell.

Your pal,
Douglas / @theDoug