
Generating Art with Code: A Handbook to “Little Planet Procedural” - happy-go-lucky
http://alanluo.com/procgen/midterm.html
======
vfaronov
The actual software seems to be [https://github.com/alan-
luo/planetprocedural](https://github.com/alan-luo/planetprocedural)

On a related note, I’m quietly amazed why there isn’t yet a working generator
of electronic music. I mean something that I can download, run, and it would
stream believable IDM/techno/trance into my earphones. It _sounds_ like it
should be so possible, if not outright easy — yet it’s still humans who are
toiling away at their Abletons weeding through that search space. I wonder
what crucial problem I’m not seeing.

~~~
andybak
Maybe it's that music matters and even instrumental music contains a similar
level of content and meaning as speech.

The minute we realise music isn't the authentic voice of another human being
we reject it.

Even my enjoyment of arguably mechanical music like some of the early
minimalist stuff - where to a degree processes determine the structure and
unfolding of the work - is mediated through my awareness of the authorial
intent of the composer. (I'm talking more about Piano Phase than Pendulum
Music here - the latter is slightly too devoid of human intervention to be
'real music' for me)

How would you feel about a novel generator? Why is that so different?

~~~
vfaronov
Are you familiar with modern electronic dance music? There’s definitely no
“authentic voice of another human being” in regular trance music, for example.
It’s hours upon hours of repetitive structural patterns overlaid on similar
timbres. Now, I’m not a very big fan of trance music, but it would be
something, and I feel like the gap between that and more interesting music
like IDM should be quantitative (more code to produce more complex patterns
over more varied timbres), not qualitative.

~~~
qzxvwt
Modern "EDM" producers actually receive a lot of criticism for these practices
from both critics/academics and laypeople. I think the massive commercial
success and general enjoyment of this music actually comes from the spectacle
of the "live" events, and so as an extension even just listening to it at
home, the spectacle is implicit and can be experienced vicariously to some
degree. On top of this, this music as a product is obviously extremely easy to
produce in comparison to other genres/processes and is thus lucrative to
profiteers.

Another reason why such utterly cheap production habits have been wildly
accepted is because of the already established history of house music and
techno, which was originally revolutionary, because those sounds and the
contexts for which they were experienced ironically represented newfound
_human_ feelings of liberation, from a youth movement to escape a bankrupt
Detroit to the fallen Berlin wall. Techno was a way for people to grab the
rising technocracy by the horns so to speak and make something specifically
human out of it.

------
asciimo
Here's the final 3d project, Big Planet Procedural:
[http://alanluo.com/procgen/final.html](http://alanluo.com/procgen/final.html)

------
alan-luo
Hi guys! Original dev here. I'm you guys enjoyed it! I had no idea this was
x-posted to Hackernews, but I noticed a surge in hits on my site and so I
investigated. I'm working on an expanded version of this currently. Let me
know if you have any other thoughts or questions!

------
wollw
A Response: "After Alan Luo"
[[http://imgur.com/fmt1Kib](http://imgur.com/fmt1Kib)]

Being an Artist with a background in technology I can't help but appreciate
this differently than I believe intended. I've been thinking a lot recently
about the boundries of what is and isn't art in regards to technology (up to
and including the division of Arts and Sciences at the Academic level) and
feel like I need to say something about the use of the word Art here.

To me, the Art is your unique contribution to the Art World, which is always
the aspect of the work the Artist puts their heart into the most. Unless
someone really picks up this tool as their medium of choice and makes true Art
with it, the Art to see here will always be the code Alan Luo has writen. Code
is poetry and deserves every bit as much respect as forms of it like concrete
poetry, where things like indentation matter. It just kind of irks me to see
Art get demeaned by people I would consider Artists if they reframed their
work.

~~~
alan-luo
Hey! Original creator here. Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I think you
bring up some very interesting ideas.

With the rise of the likes of Google's Magenta project, the use of the word
'art' is brought into question, just as you mention. So as the original dev,
I'd like to give my two cents.

I do not consider the outputs of this program as 'art.' Whether or not the
code is art is an entirely different question that I don't think is really
important to address.

The documentation was a little hastily assembled for a deadline, so the
following sentiment is not reflected in it, but the purpose of this project
was never to create 'art' with code, it was to demonstrate that there exists a
bridge between creativity and code. For me, the output of this program is not
art in itself. However, I have used the output as a place to draw inspiration
for other pieces of work that I would consider art. In this case, I use the
program as an infinite source of inspiration rather than as the art itself.

By the way, I may write a blog entry about this topic in the future. You've
brought up very interesting ideas. :)

------
muglug
The HTML5-powered renderer: [https://alan-
luo.github.io/planetprocedural/](https://alan-luo.github.io/planetprocedural/)

------
stuaxo
This is great. It gets across some really useful concepts, without seeming
inaccessible, by having some uber finished shiney 3d render in it.

