Week 1: Generative Art

ALLISON PARRISH: SMILING FACE WITHFACE

FATGHONG CHDCK POULTRI A CONVERSATION

Allison Parrish created a Tumblr bot that deconstructs or changes the markups or numbers in the SVG file of an emoji. Then sometimes combines the deconstructed emoji with another random emoji. With the end result of a 'glitchy' emoji being posted to Twitter and Tumblr. Also the bot occasionally will show a conversation between two entities using these glitchy emojis. The purpose of Allison Parrish's project was to play on the role of universal communication that emojis are suppose to bring. Allison wrote the code using Python, and lets the Computer become its own artist within her own directions.

http://www.decontextualize.com/2015/02/smiling-face-withface/

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MARIUS WATZ: SYSTEM C

Marius Watz created a computer software drawing machine that was made to produce 4 projected animated drawings in 2005 at the Animated Drawing show. Watz reverses the idea of abstraction and writes it down in code in order to create this new form of communication. Also Marius believes that it is the artists ability to make a sporadic piece of code for than the computer to create a masterful piece of abstraction, and not just the computer being the true artist. He thinks that the coder/artist has to take creative risks, not only the computer.

http://mariuswatz.com/bio/

http://mariuswatz.com/2005/01/23/system-c/

http://mariuswatz.com/2012/03/30/closed-systems-generative-art-and-software-abstraction/

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THOUGHTS

The idea, process, and outcomes of Generative art are all very interesting. Overall I do think that the computer and the coder are both the artist in these pieces, though the computer does all the technical art aspects, the coders are the ones that give the computer the directions, ideas, and gives it a starting direction. Though the computer can take those guidelines further or not is solely dependent on the outcome and the code. The question as to if a computer can make original art is solely up to the person. I generally believe it to be true because you can compare it to an artist being inspired by another artist and then creating their own work. The coder and their code can be the computers inspiration into making its own original art in a way. But people still may argue against my idea, I think most artist(not all) have some sort of inspiration through varying different kinds of sources.

However do I believe that human aesthetics can be changed into procedural thinking is a challenging question. In some aspects someone can code the different thought processes that might go through someones head when creating art and try to formalize it that way. But there are so many endless options and aspects of the human brain that are used to understand and appreciate aesthetics that computers might not be able to understand. Maybe in the future when the technology advances even further, someone will be able to accurately code human aesthetics.