

Programmatic Art - omn1
http://urbanape.com/blog/2013/02/19/dunno-if-its-art-but-i-like-it/

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runemadsen
I recently gave a talk about programmatic art at Heroku's conference.

<https://vimeo.com/groups/waza2013/videos/61113159>

My lecture notes may be of interested to you also:

<http://www.runemadsen.com/printing-code>

For example:

<http://www.runemadsen.com/printing-code/lecture-form>

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smrtinsert
I just peaked at these, and I'm bookmarking a million times over. I'm very
interested in this space right now, thanks so much with sharing your
knowledge.

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vijayr
Totally agreed, this is incredible.

If someone wants to learn, what would be the best place to get started? as in
- books, software etc? Also, is there a self paced course?

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zokier
I guess demoscene deserves a mention here. They kinda take the
generative/programmatic art thing to the extreme, and do everything in real-
time. Of course most productions these days are in 3D which makes them quite
distinct from these geometric 2D ones, but there are still some similarities.
Seeing a nice high-end 2D demo these days could be interesting.

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b6
I always go here to get demos: <http://www.pouet.net/>

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montecarl
There is a programming language for making really cool art called "Context
Free":

"Context Free is a program that generates images from written instructions
called a grammar. The program follows the instructions in a few seconds to
create images that can contain millions of shapes."

The language is impressive in how complicated the resulting images can be from
a few simple rules. Here is a link to one popular image in their gallery along
with source code:

<http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/view.php?id=1162>

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prezjordan
If anyone is looking for a gentle introduction into this sort of thing, Jeremy
Ashkenas (of Underscore/Backbone hame) wrote a wonderful Ruby wrapper for
Processing [0]. The syntax is remarkably simple (and Ruby!). Here's an example
of the Mandelbrot set [1]

[0]: <https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing>

[1]: <https://gist.github.com/prezjordan/4391313>

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williwu
No one mentioned Processing? <http://processing.org>

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inDigiNeous
Pretty cool. Looks similar to what I did before creating <http://GeoKone.NET>.
I was doodling with triangles, circles, lines and trying to figure out what
numbers would represent if they were geometry.

This led to me developing GeoKone.NET, an interactive Sacred Geometry
Generator. Check it out if you want to Create Some Recursive Geometry, it's
pretty flexible in the things you can do with it :)

<http://GeoKone.NET>

Some examples of what people are doing with this tool:

<http://indigineous.tumblr.com> <http://lgo900.wordpress.com>

Check it out if you are interested in playing around with recursive geometry!
:)

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seanmcdirmid
What does your project have to do with .NET? It seems cool, but the name is a
bit misleading.

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inDigiNeous
Nothing. It's an internet address that ends in .NET and I like to spell it
this way.

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sebsauvage
A few years ago I wrote WebGobbler (Gallery here:
<http://sebsauvage.net/webgobbler/>). (My program would deserve an update.)

At the bottom of the page, I also listed a few more generative art projects.

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dups
This work is really aesthetically pleasing. Nice one!

Programmatic art generally falls under the domain of generative creativity. A
field that draws inspiration from topics as varied as biology and
architecture.

In terms of visual art, some of you might enjoy the painting fool:
<http://www.thepaintingfool.com/>

For an up to date and compressive overview of generative creativity, check out
this book: <http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/book/978-3-642-31726-2>

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carlosag
Very nice. Four years ago I was creating physical generative paintings: GA's
that would produce physical painted works. <http://carlos.ag/painter.html>

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bennyg
That's awesome! I've been playing around with some machine learning stuff
recently, and because of my art background, I've been wanting to tackle
similar stuff to this. Did you let your genetic algorithms run on real-life
paintings? i.e. Did they get refine after making a physical model, or did you
do the refinement and evolution before it got the physical creation phase?

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carlosag
The GA was based on an open loop simulation. I tuned a digital canvas /
painting simulation by hand and then evolved the paintings in simulation.
After evolving the painting I would execute the painting with a robotic arm. I
did some preliminary work on closing the loop: using the actual output of the
painting to tune the simulation but didn't get too far. A paper on my methods
/ simulation and results: <http://carlos.ag/GA2008paper.pdf>

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abecedarius
These are pretty great -- they're making me want to dive back in to the art
thing. (My old stuff from around 2000: <http://djb.deviantart.com/gallery/>
and <http://wry.me/~darius/gallery/index.html> from code at
<https://github.com/darius/tusdl> \-- my involvement in the actual images was
limited to feedback to the program as it threw them up.)

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jankins
I've recently had the recurring idea that it would be awesome if I could do
this with music, I found this after a quick search:
<http://overtone.github.io/> (+ it's an excuse to learn clojure) Anyone have
experience doing this with music, & might have some opinion on the best tools?

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dups
I have a bunch of friends studying music informatics, who are very much into
algorithmic music. They never seem to stop talking about Supercollider.

One of our lecturers maintains a pretty good list of languages and tools for
generative creativity: <http://www.chadmckinneyaudio.com/generativecreativity>

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timestretch
If you are into programmer art, you might like my desktop picture gallery.

There are Buddhabrots, fractal flames, recursive 3d structures made with
Structure Synth and POV-ray. Most pictures are 2560x1600.

<http://www.timestretch.com/page/gallery>

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terhechte
How eerie, I had literally just (10 min ago) searched for something like this
on Google and Github; I wanted to looked into dynamic generation of patterns
but the only thing I could find were simple stripes and tartans. Cool stuff.

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DanBC
There's an ancient book that is handy - 'Computers, Pattern, Chaos & Beauty'.

It has pseudo code and a bunch of illustrations.
([http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Beauty-Clifford-
Pick...](http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Beauty-Clifford-
Pickover/dp/0486417093))

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daralthus
<http://www.generative-gestaltung.de/> is a bit more fresh! And all source
code is up on the site.

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andrewcooke
these are nice. are you aware of andy gilmore? some of his work is similar -
<http://crowquills.com/ANDY-GILMORE>

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decktech
I've heard that Andy's work (while amazing) isn't generative. I think he
actually lays it all out by hand (in Illustrator or the like). Not sure if
genius or crazy, maybe both.

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svantana
Yes that seems to be the case <http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/andy-
gilmore-2>

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john2x
For more inspiration (and tutorials), Generative Design[1] is awesome.

[1]: <http://generative-gestaltung.de>

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daralthus
Also check out Nature of Code[1]. You could read it online.

[1]:<http://natureofcode.com/book/>

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sp332
Aza Raskin's "Algorithm Ink" project is pretty easy browser-based tool to work
with. <http://azarask.in/projects/algorithm-ink/#f9ed4e9b> and
<http://azarask.in/projects/algorithm-ink/#e8ff0b8c> for example. Click the
"edit" button at the top to see how it's done.

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swayvil
I too am into programmatic art. <http://fleen.org>

Are those wallpapers "live wallpapers"?

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urbanape
Thanks for the nice comments, folks.

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schwa
How about the snarky ones like "Hacker News? Really Zac?"

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urbanape
I love you, schwa.

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Draco6slayer
Renaissance artists didn't do much actual painting. They just sketched what
they wanted, mixed colours, and had students do the rest. This is basically
the same thing, only with abstract art. If this isn't art, then the
renaissance didn't have any artists.

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bennyg
Andy Warhol had a Factory of people working for him too. Damien Hirst does now
as well. It's not uncommon at all for artists to do residencies with big name
artists. Have you ever had a gallery show? Let alone a whole museum at your
disposal to do something with creatively - it's a ton of work, even for a
group of people.

I'm agreeing with you though, this is art. Sometimes, so is my mom's cooking.

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Draco6slayer
Exactly my point. Just because someone else is doing the work (or, in this
case, something else) doesn't mean that the work isn't the first person's art.
And yes, I suppose, anything can be technically art. But this is veritably the
same kind of art we've already come to accept.

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mehwoot
Really, really cool.

