
Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy - trueduke
https://www.artnome.com/news/2018/8/8/generative-art-finds-its-prodigy
======
crucialfelix
I like Manolo Naon's art, and I am quite fond of creative coding, but
something that strikes me when seeing this article comparing his works to
Kandinsky, Ernst et. al is that his works are always harmonious, a single idea
in action, whereas all these classic artists have conflicts and discord in
their works.

They deliberately avoided doing things that were simply decorative or
pleasant. (Probably they were avoiding accusations of just making couch and
wallpaper patterns)

There is more to experience then just one decorative process at work.

You can _feel_ the artist's presence and discord in the images. Look at the
Max Ernst works and ask yourself why he left it imperfect, fading away like
dreams or unconscious processes.

Look at the Kandinskys. There is far more information (different design
processes juxtaposed), and even after looking at it for a while you still have
to wonder how it is balanced and yet there's barely any repetition.

Manolo is always explicit and readable. There is a lack of mystery. Once
you've examined the image then you like it, but nothing stirs in the depths.

But he's young, I like the direction, and he will definitely keep developing.

~~~
wool_gather
I've experienced what you're talking about as maybe the fundamental challenge
in making computer-based art. Computers love to follow rules. Come up with
some interesting rules, and they will spit out interesting pictures/music.
It's much much harder to figure out how to tell the computer "okay, but break
the rule just a little bit, at the appropriate time". Codifying breaking the
rules _as its own rule_ is...well, so far it's mostly eluded me.

~~~
TuringTest
Maybe there's an opportunity to combine computers and hand-made choices.

Art using a mixture of several generative tools and manual tweaks by the
artist on the final result could achieve that goal of "breaking the rules just
a little bit", especially if the generative tools are parametrical and easy to
customize, maybe with direct manipulation on the generated canvas.

~~~
egfx
If you're interested in this. Combining generated art with manual tweaks. Look
into [http://gif.com.ai](http://gif.com.ai)

You're in for a pleasant surprise.

------
userbinator
It seems that recently there's been interest in procedurally-generated imagery
among artists, but almost all completely unaware that the demoscene has been
doing the same (and much advanced its techniques) for many years:

[http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarching...](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)

~~~
tinco
Demoscene demos are nice, but to me they feel more like expressions of
technical prowess rather than aesthetic art. I don't think I've ever seen a
demo where the result transcends the algorithm, and I don't think that's the
goal of the demoscene in any case. They want to showcase how much technical
brilliance they can fit in a couple of KB's.

That's different from this example, where the goal is more like how much
expression (emotion/aesthetics) can I put into a single image. And I must say
I agree with the author that his work is astounding in this regard. Each one
of them feels like a proper artwork, not just someone that's fiddling with a
couple algorithms.

~~~
cpdt
You're right that many demos simply exist to showcase technical brilliance,
but many in the demoscene are starting to trend further towards expressing
artistic ability. Some examples off the top of my head:

\- Number One/Another One by CNCD/FLT:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=77399](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=77399)

\- When Silence Dims the Stars Above by Conspiracy:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75713](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75713)

\- Aurora by Excess:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75791](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=75791)

\- Along for the Ride by Ümlaüt Design:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78053](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78053)

~~~
dharma1
Smash smashing it again with the first one...

BTW - your realtime synth engine
([https://github.com/monadgroup/axiom](https://github.com/monadgroup/axiom))
looks great. Any ETA for a Mac build of the VST?

~~~
cpdt
I have a super-beta build working, if you'd like to try it out/help bugfix
shoot me an email at "copodt at the google email" and I'll send it to you :)

------
holdenc
If you want to understand art since Cezanne, and especially after 1945, you
need to understand the modernist idea of the meta-narrative. It works like
this -- prior to the loosening up of gesture in painting, the narrative was
whatever was depicted. Maybe it was Washington Crossing the Delaware, or
Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Pictures told stories directly. Beginning with
impressionist painting, and following through to non-objective modernist
paint, pictures told a second story -- a meta-narrative. This is the narrative
of the events that created the painting. It answers the question -- what is
the story of this artwork's creation? This leaves the viewer to deal with
things like struggle, imperfection, and arbitrary residue (there are cigarette
butts within some Jackson Pollocks). Did you ever visit MoMa and see Barnett
Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimimis?

[https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&l...](https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist)

It could be a generative work of art -- but wait -- the vertical stripes where
the masking tape was peeled away leave small amount of paint bleeding into the
stripes. Why? It tells you something about how it was made. Cold geometric
forms made with a human touch. Visit the Joseph Albers, Piet Mondrian and Ad
Reinhardt paintings and there's arbitrariness and human touch in them all.

So, I would ask you -- what is the meta-narrative of this generative art? What
is the story behind it? Does it inspire you? Do you feel like you are looking
at art? Or a modern art-themed screensaver?

~~~
ryandrake
I’m not an art history major, but why does a work of art require a backstory?
Or a meta-story? Why is a screensaver not “real” art? It seems so limiting.
That’s a beautiful painting and the painter is very talented, but there is no
existential dread evident in the brush strokes, no social commentary on the
intersection between class warfare and feminism, so it’s not “real art”. Who
makes these rules?

It’s like when you hear a young pianist play Liszt perfectly or a Rachmaninov
piece better than Rachmaninov did, and the critics say, “Well there was no
emotion there, no struggle—she has a long way to go.” Bullshit! It was great!
Why can’t art just be appreciated itself, without all this “story” baggage?

~~~
gedy
> Why can’t art just be appreciated itself, without all this “story” baggage?

Because that eliminates the in-group, experts, elite, etc. Hence all the
"rules" and terms like "outsider art", etc

~~~
tern
You can similarly ask, 'how could art exist without "in-group, experts, elite,
etc."'? Why in the world would anyone create all these bizarre objects?

------
varjag
Another interesting artist in this genre:

[https://twitter.com/inconvergent](https://twitter.com/inconvergent)

[https://img.inconvergent.net/](https://img.inconvergent.net/)

~~~
kubami
Shameless plug: Inspired by "inconvergent" I have built a plotter and started
working on my own generative art realised with pen and paper:
[https://www.instagram.com/framedbyher/](https://www.instagram.com/framedbyher/)

~~~
hrnnnnnn
Where did you get the plotter?

~~~
kubami
I have built it myself. I was inspired by a couple of tutorials I found on the
internet. Most of the components are off the shelf, stepper motors, smooth
rods, belt, arduino, etc. The components that hold everything together are
either 3d-printed or laser cut. The software that is running on the arduino
that translates gcode -> stepper motor impulses is slightly modified grbl [0]

I have a (poor) timelapse video of the assembly process - [1]

[0] [https://github.com/grbl/grbl](https://github.com/grbl/grbl)

[1] [https://framedbyher.com/the-story/](https://framedbyher.com/the-story/)

------
tern
For anyone interested in the history of generative art and its parent
discipline "(new) media art", some historical resources:

\- [http://generative.net/read/home](http://generative.net/read/home)

\-
[http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/](http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/)

\-
[http://userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/book/infoartsbook.html](http://userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/book/infoartsbook.html)

\- [http://archive.aec.at/](http://archive.aec.at/), and
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-
attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-
attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da76a6194bfc5184a427c5b3.pdf?1376461955)

\- [http://dada.compart-bremen.de/](http://dada.compart-bremen.de/)

\- [http://turbulence.org/](http://turbulence.org/)

\- [http://neural.it/](http://neural.it/) (magazine)

\- [http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/](http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/)

\- [http://www.nettime.org/](http://www.nettime.org/) (classic net.art mailing
list)

\- [http://we-make-money-not-art.com/](http://we-make-money-not-art.com/)
(previous-generation blog)

\-
[http://www.creativeapplications.net/](http://www.creativeapplications.net/)
(current generation blog)

Referring to Naon as a "prodigy" is a deeply out-of-context claim.

~~~
spot
[http://archive.aec.at/prix/](http://archive.aec.at/prix/) all the way back to
1987. Naon is a tiny blip in an ocean of creativity and ideas.

------
samfriedman
I think Naon is very distinctive for his embracement of the importance of
human touch & influence in generative art. His choice of color, his adjustment
of the shape and form in the work (either intentional or accidental) all
produce works that have a human element to them even as they are generated by
a Processing script. Automation is a tool and a big element of the work, but
the vision of the artist and his creation plays a big part in what the end
result looks like.

I've often wondered - and maybe this is an actively explored area of art -
what it would look like to attempt to remove _all_ human impact from the
process of generative art. A human will write the code, so maybe that's
impossible, but how far divorced from the influence of the coder can the
resulting work be? Do we just end up at random noise, or is it still possible
to make something pleasing without a conscious guiding hand? Distribution-
mimicking methods like GANs are very "hands-off" like this in principle, but
of course are influenced by the training data. Interested to see how
generative art continues to play out in the future.

------
obituary_latte
Joshua Davis [0] has been doing generative art (mostly Flash/actionscript)
since late 90’s. Took a class of his once and it was amazing (as is his art).

If OP subject is prodigy, Davis is the grandfather.

[https://joshuadavis.com](https://joshuadavis.com)

~~~
Breefield
Came here to say this

~~~
tern
In the same tradition: [http://mariuswatz.com/](http://mariuswatz.com/)

------
rices
Generative art is a fascinating space - it's in its infancy for sure - I've
been getting into it this past year and wrote my first algorithm about a year
ago:

[https://anemy.github.io/concentric/](https://anemy.github.io/concentric/)

Like all art, it comes down to who witnesses it, and how it makes them feel.
However - there's a definite gap between seeing something in real life versus
digitally which I'd like to see Naon bridge. There's a large community of
plotters which are doing a good job of bringing generative art into the real
world. Definitely worth checking out the twitter hashtag:

[https://twitter.com/hashtag/plottertwitter?src=hash](https://twitter.com/hashtag/plottertwitter?src=hash)

Naon cranks out amazing compositions at an astounding rate, it makes me real
happy to see him get some good exposure like this.

One of the cofounders of Etsy, Jared Tarbell, is also a great artist and worth
checking out:
[http://www.complexification.net/gallery/](http://www.complexification.net/gallery/)

If you'd like to see more generative works, the subreddit is a good starting
place:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/](https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/)

~~~
hellochar
Concentric looks really great! It actually has decent variation

------
anonytrary
Apparently, he published all of his code (I didn't see any mention of where).
Regarding the color -- he mentions being careful with the palette, but I
wonder how he gets it to turn out correctly (assuming it's RNG). It seems like
you would have to keep generating new instances until you find one that looks
pleasing.

One algorithm that comes to mind:

    
    
      1. Choose a color palette and initial resolution.
      2. Implement generative features at current resolution.
      3. Generate the output and until it "looks right".
      4. Increase feature resolution.
      5. Go to step 2.
    

In other words, one could keep generating prints until the locations and
extents of the sampled colors "looks right", then keep the random seed and
continue implementing finer details until they "look right", etc.

This will be the second time I drop this on HN this week, but check out
Primitive Pictures[0] if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Also, I
highly recommend Schiffman's YouTube channel[1] which goes into depth on how
to get started with processing (and p5.js, the browser/canvas version). Note
that the artist in the article learned how to do this by reading Schiffman's
book, which is covered in a series of tutorials in the linked YouTube channel.

[0]
[https://github.com/fogleman/primitive](https://github.com/fogleman/primitive)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw)

~~~
mkl
I don't think this algorithm is very common. In particular, the colour palette
can usually be chosen _last_ , and a lot of generative art (at least all that
shown in the article) will not need multiple resolution passes. I think a more
common discovery/refinement process is to go from more random to less random,
or random in particular kinds of ways. For example, you can specify the values
or distributions (or at least ranges of values) for particular parameters
based on things you think will look good or which should end up similar in
ways you like to things you've found already.

Generative art is a search in an extremely high dimensional space. The more
you go into it aiming for something in particular, the more nailed down it is
and the closer to traditional art (and the harder to pull off well IMHO, think
how much difference slightly changing the position of one of the elements in
these images would make, versus slightly changing the position of someone's
eye). If you go looking for "new and interesting" or "looks good" without
really aiming for anything in particular, it can be a lot easier to find good
things.

I've seen a couple of really interesting talks recently about the surprising
successfulness of objective-less search by Ken Stanley:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI)
(40 min.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBViI8ZaU0)
(90 min.)

He started off looking at human-directed machine-evolved generative art, and
ended up with a far more general discovery.

------
wgx
I don't think we're being radical enough. I think this kind of art is
fantastic, but it copies human-designed art. Let's do things that aren't
possible with paint or crayons - let's do multi-dimensional time-shifting
video art.

I guess we need to do stuff that looks like 'normal' art first, to get people
used to it.

~~~
pharrington
In my town we call that stuff "video games."

~~~
tern
I think of most generative art as video games larping as "fine art."

------
throwaway777i
I've been making art from randomly generated numbers for years. It's a
realization of Pollock's objective where the viewer's subconscious is the only
artist free from bias of any other person, a conduit of the mind.

[https://imgur.com/a/2qRHjxl](https://imgur.com/a/2qRHjxl)

------
calebm
I believe the purpose of Art is to reveal the soul of the Artist. This is why
simply copying (or trying to emulate) the work of another artist is not
considered art. However, learning to follow the rules set by others is a
helpful stepping stone to striking out on your own and breaking those rules.

------
d--b
One has to remember that "generative art" only characterizes techniques for
generating pictures. Art itself is about what the picture makes people feel,
or what they have to say. Just making pictures for the only purpose of being
"beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...

~~~
hodwic
> Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just
> not very artful...

Beauty is the goal of art.

If his works don't resonate as well as a Nikolay Dubovskoy or a Cy Twombly, or
any other human artist, it's in beauty that he fails.

I find that generally this confusion around "beauty" comes from using a
popular but non-standard definition of beauty.

Beauty has meant, since the ancient Greeks and up through the romantics to
today, "a higher emotional response", whether joyful, sorrowful or disgust.

Beauty is often confused for perfection among laymen. This is not a popular
definition of beauty with aesthetic theoreticians, and only reached popularity
under the regimes of the early 20th century fascists.

Beauty is a revelatory emotion, any revelatory emotion.

In aesthetics, the opposite of beauty isn't ugliness, but literalism and cold
intellectualization.

That which isn't beauty in art is mere journalism, politics, or advertising --
these are lesser concerns than beauty.

Confusing that which isn't beauty in art for the core of art is like thinking
that fashion and hairstyles is the core of music, when quite the opposite is
true. Fashion diminishes music, not strengthens it.

Similarly -- that which is not about beauty in art diminishes it, not
strengthens it.

~~~
tern
I'm curious how your theory of art deals with minimalism and conceptual art. I
suspect you'd have to admit that mid-century we collectively expanded the
definition of beauty to include modern ideas – structure, process – and
expressions of irony.

~~~
hodwic
As for irony, ask any art historian with experience in middle ages or late
antiquity art. She'll tell you that it has always been a popular device in the
arts.

The problem with "irony", where this common myth about its novelty comes from,
is that Irony is invisible to generations separated by time and place.

To see irony in a work of antiquity requires a significant amount of education
in the circumstances of that work. Irony never lies of the surface of a work.
If enough time passes, our appreciation of that irony will often be lost.

How much irony is hidden there in the vase paintings of ancient Greece which
we will never recognize, having not the context to see it? Irony, a Greek
term, coined by Aristotle, passed on by the Romans, and more recently
popularized in the 1500's by the French -- yet could we recognize Irony in any
of their works without help?

If the average art critic finds no instances of irony in the art of the past
they could be excused for that, their job isn't art history. Those are
separate professions.

Where art critics do deserve blame however is when they've been shown
countless examples of irony in the works of antiquity, and they act as if
those instances are all unique anomalies. If they continue to bandy about the
story of irony's novelty to defend the valuations of the works of their
contemporaries, that's not fair play.

That's Art Criticism made Marketing, and it's an ugly but extremely common
thing.

~~~
tern
Many thanks for the explanation – you've illuminated a path to a deeper
understanding of art history and aesthetics, which I hope one day to possess!

------
yantrams
Discovered him on Twitter last year and was immediately blown away to see how
his compositions resembled futurist and constructivist works to an uncanny
extant. (Malevich, Kandinsky et al.) There is something about his choice of
color palette that makes him really stand apart.

------
daveguy
These are some beautiful images. I am relieved to see this article is about a
person and not an algorithm. I wish I knew what quality it is about these that
are more appealing. I think it is the abstract nature of it. Some look like
flowers, some like 80s pop art, some reminiscent of Dali. The images remind me
of specific human shared experiences without having to reproduce an dog
eyeball in the middle. Human Generative (algorithms + design) vs AI Generative
(algorithms only). Maybe I am biased for team human and if someone told me
these images were created by a neural network I would be more critical.
Although I don't think these could be created by a NN. Certainly not picking
different themes for each set.

------
rando444
Interesting that he wants to keep it all digital and prefers it not made
tangible.

Seems like it would be much harder to make any sort of living from your work
by limiting the format to just digital.

Really cool nonetheless.

------
quxbar
I really do love generative art, but this article was so hyperbolic I couldn't
make it through. I think this is generating designs, nice patterns for throw
pillows, but not art. The only generative artist I know who deserves the
article's level of idolatry is Tarn Adams, because Dwarf Fortress actually
creates stories and scenarios that provoke thought.

------
megamindbrian2
This gives me an idea. What it game textures for 3D models were entirely made
up of shaders/generative algorithms. The entire game could be rendered with an
equation and never have to load assets.

~~~
minikomi
That's how a lot of the demoscene stuff works I'm sure!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY5Vrc5G0lk)

> The secret behind all this is procedural content generation. in a nutshell,
> instead of storing a movie as-is we're storing a certain number of
> mathematical formulas for image and audio manipulation as well as the
> "recipe" how to apply those small bits of code in a way that what you see
> comes out.

------
jacquesm
Interesting stuff. All works of art tend to build on what came before, this
does so in a much more direct way. At what point is something a derivative
work rather than original?

~~~
3x
Actually if you check out more of his work it looks quite different from what
was chosen for this article. I think the article wants to portray a logical
progression from modern art to generative art, or just to show that an
algorithm is capable of generating images that are similar to those of highly
creative human artists.

[https://www.behance.net/manoloide](https://www.behance.net/manoloide)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Manolo+Gamboa+Naon&num=100&h...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Manolo+Gamboa+Naon&num=100&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3ucCyjrDdAhWV-
mEKHR7mBQIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=618#imgrc=_)

He also is a young guy with plenty of time ahead to develop his own style. As
someone who also experiments with generative art and music I am absolutely
impressed by what he's done so far.

------
Anonymous4C54D6
You can't say generative art without saying demoscene.

~~~
tern
Both generative art and the demoscene were preceded by decades of work with
their own histories.

------
smrtinsert
Very interesting pieces he has produced. I wonder how much is generated via
rules vs simply coded. Cool find.

------
puzzle
I thought this was going to be a profile of Scott Draves of Electric Sheep
fame.

------
yoz-y
I know art is whatever people describe as art but I can't really get behind
this specific kind of creation. To me this creates as much emotion as a
gravatar and reminds me of my dabbling in fractal art. Just hit random until
something nice comes out.

~~~
mattkevan
It's cheating because it was done on a computer!

It's a fairly common attitude that creating with a computer is somehow
inferior, from Tron missing out on a special effects Oscar because computer
graphics was 'cheating', to pretty much every designer being told at some
point 'it can't be that hard, it's all done on a computer right?'

Expected better from HN though.

~~~
vertline3
Well at risk of waking a tiger, I think his view was one of intentionality.
Whereas he did not say it was because it was made with a computer, that sort
of feels like putting words in his post.

I think cool generative art is the space stuff like no man's sky, and spore. I
know it's maybe considered low brow but it was interesting to me.

------
bhouston
This site is blocked by the coffeeshop wifi as inappropriate content. I'm at
Tim Hortons in Ottawa.

~~~
jacquesm
+1 416 977 8000

~~~
erikpukinskis
The butter donut reminds me of Alaska.

