How to love (and make) generative art

August 31, 2018 11:43 PM

Jason Bailey explains why you should love generative art , which uses computers to introduce random elements to the work but is still under the artist's control. With roots in the 1960s and many women artists, it now includes various machine-learning elements too. The article has many examples and links to even more, but you can also try to make some yourself. If you already know how to code, Tim Holman explains the process in Generative Art Speedrun (captions available) and has tutorials for nearly-recreating famous works using JavaScript at Generative Artistry. If you don't know how to code, you can play with Heydon Pickering's Mutable Gallery to calibrate and download pieces for yourself.
posted by harriet vane (9 comments total)

I really like the tutorials on that Generative Artistry link. It breaks down a complex explanation into manageable chunks which get pasted into a live code box as you scroll down, while still being editable so you can fiddle around with the magic numbers to see what effect they have. The technique is a neat blend of static article and interactivity that's appropriate for both those with an idle interest and are just here for the pictures or those who have a deeper interest and want to hack around. It's neat!

My favourite generative art app is JWildfire which does a type of abstract algorithmic art called fractal flames. It's a really clunky java app, but the effects can be quite impressive.
posted by Eleven at 4:24 AM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is fascinating. I am so disappointed in people who are "gate keepers" for anything, but especially for something as subjective as art. Of course this is art! And the person coding is an artist!

Thank you for posting - I am going to spend the weekend playing around with code.
posted by source.decay at 4:29 AM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you'd like to experiment with your own generative art Context Free Art is available for free and it's not too hard to start drawing your own trippy trees and geometric figures.
posted by Alison at 5:50 AM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nice post. The other day, I encountered this little project on procedurally generating tarot cards, which I thought were beautiful. The tarot card names are also randomly generated; I'm looking at Queen of Leaves and Nine of Beans right now. It's wonderful.
posted by tickingclock at 6:08 AM on September 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Nice post! I like how the two tutorials illustrate the paradox of generative art.

Mutable Gallery is super easy; load the model, press the reload button until you get what you want. You are the artists! Except not, of course, after you click reload a few times you quickly grasp the limits of the system. You realize you're not really doing anything creative other than selecting a pleasing output.

Generative Artist is a goddamn programming tutorial. For 95% of readers the fact there's code at all is a hard-stop, they bounce right off. But with just a bit of help (or a framework like Processing) this kind of coding is really not that hard and anyone who can use a text editor can use it. The joy with this kind of experience is now you have your hands on the code, can manipulate it. Maybe you have a typo, a happy accident that produces something new. Maybe you decide to extend it a bit, "what if I make the color random?" Start messing with the logic, "if I put a loop around this I can have 1000 objects instead of 1". That's the art, in the programming.
posted by Nelson at 6:31 AM on September 1, 2018

The book "Flash Math Creativity" from the early 2000s might be an interesting reference. It is a compilation of generative art made in Flash, written by the artists, where they also explain the mathematical ideas behind the code. Was very influential on me as a teenager.
posted by scose at 5:29 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh that reminds me one of my treasures is a copy of Horst Völz's Computer und Kunst (link to full scan), a 1988 East German book about computer art. Page 36 or so has some generative art pieces. It's a remarkable book.
posted by Nelson at 6:08 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I was sure I went down a generative art rabbit-hole because of a post here on MeFi, but wasn't able to find anything to list as 'previously' links. If I'm just bad at searching I'd love for anyone to link other posts here.
posted by harriet vane at 6:20 PM on September 1, 2018

Holy hell, Nelson, scrolling that Computer und Kurst link rewinds me to circa ~10-11 years old, when my Dad, trying to develop my nascent skills at math, would bring me textbooks home from the high school where he taught, drop them off and tell me "here, read these." Text was incomprehensible, visuals supported a loose intuition, and the overall vague feeling that there was meaning, syntax, and flow in the pages... but they were all the water in the ice cube I was holding.

I distinctly remember the odd gravity of those readings 30-ish years ago, and I'm tickled to enjoy the same vibe presently.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 10:02 PM on September 1, 2018 [1 favorite]