12 ms·

Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy

340 points by trueduke 8y ago

anonytrary 8y ago
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
- machinelearning 8y ago
  It seems to be published here: https://github.com/manoloide/AllSketchs https://github.com/manoloide/AllSketchs
- mkl 8y ago
  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.
jacquesm 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3ucCyjrDdAhWV-mEKHR7mBQIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=618#imgrc=_ https://www.google.com/search?q=Manolo+Gamboa+Naon&num=100&h... 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.
yoz-y 8y ago
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.
- person_of_color 8y ago
  Irritating and parochial post. It doesn't look random at all. There is thought behind it. Hence the code.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    At all?
- jcelerier 8y ago
  > Just hit random until something nice comes out. well, congrats, you're an artist ?
- mattkevan 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
- keithpeter 8y ago
  "Just hit random until something nice comes out." Reformulate as 'have a system for building new bodies, add a little bit of randomness, and have an environment that selects for survival' and you have life.
varjag 8y ago
Another interesting artist in this genre: https://twitter.com/inconvergent https://twitter.com/inconvergent https://img.inconvergent.net/ https://img.inconvergent.net/
- kubami 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Where did you get the plotter?
    - kubami 8y ago
      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/
- jankins 8y ago
  Inconvergent is my favorite as well. The artist in the article uses Processing; inconvergent builds his own tools which I think is cooler: https://github.com/inconvergent/snek https://github.com/inconvergent/snek
rando444 8y ago
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.
yantrams 8y ago
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.
wgx 8y ago
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.
- michaelscott 8y ago
  Doing something that is only possible with machines in art is indeed what I think this "genre"/period needs in order to be seen as something truly unique and new. As you point out this is merely creating the same kind of art with a new tool. The use of Processing to create familiar works is the same as picking up a piece of charcoal for the first time in human history and using only one of its worn-down edges to create hand print images on a rock wall. It's interesting and fresh, but it's not taking advantage of the medium.
- pharrington 8y ago
  In my town we call that stuff "video games."
  - tern 8y ago
    I think of most generative art as video games larping as "fine art."
- cpdt 8y ago
  Have you heard of the demoscene? The modern scene is, to a large degree, art as a computer-based audiovisual experience rendered in real time.
obituary_latte 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Came here to say this
  - tern 8y ago
    In the same tradition: http://mariuswatz.com/ http://mariuswatz.com/
jghjg 8y ago
So if a modern artist paints random shit they are crap but if a computer does it, it's cool because durr computers are kool long live hackerz
userbinator 8y ago
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/raymarchingdf.htm http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarching... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
- tinco 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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?
crucialfelix 8y ago
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.
- tinco 8y ago
  I think you can seperate these two aspects of Kandinsky or Ernst's works. On one side the skill and aesthetics of the artwork, and on the other side the reflection of their times and circumstances. We've established that Naon, Kandinsky and Ernst make beautiful artworks. So it makes sense to compare them on their aesthetics if they have similarities. When it comes to the 'depth' you are speaking of, the modernists are pushing back against their environments and their history, struggling and competing with their contemporaries. This makes the art 'live' and gives it uniqueness. Never again can someone have the exact same circumstances and history of Kandinsky, those times are simply over. Naon has his own history and his own circumstances. Maybe now they may seem shallow, but time will tell if his time and experience was unique, and his artwork a reflection of it. As you say he is young, maybe there is still more inside of him to grow and come out. But I have to say I have not seen generative art that good before. If nothing else, it might be the best we've got to challenge the next generation of generative AI art with.
  - tern 8y ago
    We can already suggest a simple interpretation: generative art is more of a craft tradition akin to illustration and what is traditionally called the "decorative" or "applied" arts. One unpopular litmus test for whether a practice might be appropriately categorized as "fine art" or "contemporary art" is to look at the economic relationships and institutions involved. "Art" with a capital A tends to be supported exclusively by wealthy patrons, with some help from governments, foundations, and non-profits. Artists sell their work through galleries, or directly to their patrons, and as they age they either succeed or fail to enter a "mid-career artist" phase, where their work becomes canonized through reviews in particular publications, inclusion in group shows, and solo shows at "important" institutions. Anything outside of this very specific system is difficult to call "Art" with a capital A. It's worth noting that this mode of production is overwhelmingly minor in comparison with modes of production post-Internet. Memes, 4chan, YouTube, DeviantArt, art produced in conjunction with the advertising industry, etc. completely eclipse "Art" today, and it's difficult to speak authoritatively of any kind of canon of "art" in general. However, it's clear that when we compare the "art" of today to the "Art" of the past that we see in the great museums of the past, we are comparing fundamentally different things.
bhouston 8y ago
This site is blocked by the coffeeshop wifi as inappropriate content. I'm at Tim Hortons in Ottawa.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  +1 416 977 8000
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    The butter donut reminds me of Alaska.
samfriedman 8y ago
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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
megamindbrian2 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Check out Signed Distance Fields (SDF) on Shadertoy.
- soared 8y ago
  No Man's Sky is similar. Effectively unlimited procedurally generated planets, with unique flora/fauna/terrain/etc.
- CmdrKrool 8y ago
  One of the currently-trending productions on Shadertoy happens to be this recreation of the opening of Unreal, all procedurally generated (except for the geometry, though you can certainly find procedurally generated geometry elsewhere on that site). https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ls2SDD https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ls2SDD
- aggerdom 8y ago
  Take a look at an old PS1 game called LSD: Dream Emulator that did this to interesting effect. Alt J used a screenshot from it for cover art of one of their albums.
smrtinsert 8y ago
Very interesting pieces he has produced. I wonder how much is generated via rules vs simply coded. Cool find.
d--b 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Not just beauty. Also expression, and emotional appeal. Some very ugly paintings and sculptures speak to whole generations about injustice etc. Maybe generative art fails there too, I don't know.
    - hodwic 8y ago
      Ugliness is not the opposite of beauty. Ugliness is a form of beauty, or at least its necessary foil. This has been understood for thousands of years. See Laocoön and His Sons, one of the most beautiful works of art in the human tradition, because of the tragic ugliness therein. See Hotel Rwanda, one of the most beautiful films ever made, because of the tragic ugliness therein. Injustice in art often builds the beauty. If there was only injustice, with nothing transcendent about it, it would not stand up as a work of art. It would be brutality porn. Take that most famous picture of slavery, the scarred photo of a slave's back. The picture's power derives not just from the scars, a record of his mistreatment, but also from his uprightness and strength. There would be nothing transcendent or beautiful in it were it a photo of a man reduced to nothing. It would not be art. Similarly, the photo of the Chinese man in front of tanks in Tienanmen square is not just about the brutality of communism, but also the strength of the individual. If the photo was merely of a man crushed under a tank, it would scarcely be art. At best it would be journalism, but more likely it would be mere violence porn.
puzzle 8y ago
I thought this was going to be a profile of Scott Draves of Electric Sheep fame.
rices 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Concentric looks really great! It actually has decent variation
deleted 8y ago
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holdenc 8y ago
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&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&l... 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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
calebm 8y ago
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.
Anonymous4C54D6 8y ago
You can't say generative art without saying demoscene.
- tern 8y ago
  Both generative art and the demoscene were preceded by decades of work with their own histories.
daveguy 8y ago
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.
deleted 8y ago
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quxbar 8y ago
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.
tern 8y ago
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/139740/8aec5cb9da76a6194bfc5184a427c5b3.pdf?1376461955 https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da... - 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 8y ago
  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.
- yaw 8y ago
  - http://recodeproject.com/ http://recodeproject.com/ (reinterpretations of early generative art)
- tern 8y ago
  - https://web.archive.org/web/20081212130233/http://www.generatorx.no:80/category/generative-art/ https://web.archive.org/web/20081212130233/http://www.genera...
throwaway777i 8y ago
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
person_of_color 8y ago
Best comment thread on HN in sometime

340 points by trueduke 8y ago

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

machinelearning 8y ago
It seems to be published here: https://github.com/manoloide/AllSketchs https://github.com/manoloide/AllSketchs
mkl 8y ago
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.

jacquesm 8y ago

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 8y ago
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&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3ucCyjrDdAhWV-mEKHR7mBQIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=618#imgrc=_ https://www.google.com/search?q=Manolo+Gamboa+Naon&num=100&h... 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.

yoz-y 8y ago

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.

person_of_color 8y ago
Irritating and parochial post. It doesn't look random at all. There is thought behind it. Hence the code.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  At all?
jcelerier 8y ago
> Just hit random until something nice comes out. well, congrats, you're an artist ?
mattkevan 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
keithpeter 8y ago
"Just hit random until something nice comes out." Reformulate as 'have a system for building new bodies, add a little bit of randomness, and have an environment that selects for survival' and you have life.

varjag 8y ago

Another interesting artist in this genre: https://twitter.com/inconvergent https://twitter.com/inconvergent https://img.inconvergent.net/ https://img.inconvergent.net/

kubami 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Where did you get the plotter?
  - kubami 8y ago
    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/
jankins 8y ago
Inconvergent is my favorite as well. The artist in the article uses Processing; inconvergent builds his own tools which I think is cooler: https://github.com/inconvergent/snek https://github.com/inconvergent/snek

rando444 8y ago

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.

yantrams 8y ago

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.

wgx 8y ago

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.

michaelscott 8y ago
Doing something that is only possible with machines in art is indeed what I think this "genre"/period needs in order to be seen as something truly unique and new. As you point out this is merely creating the same kind of art with a new tool. The use of Processing to create familiar works is the same as picking up a piece of charcoal for the first time in human history and using only one of its worn-down edges to create hand print images on a rock wall. It's interesting and fresh, but it's not taking advantage of the medium.
pharrington 8y ago
In my town we call that stuff "video games."
- tern 8y ago
  I think of most generative art as video games larping as "fine art."
cpdt 8y ago
Have you heard of the demoscene? The modern scene is, to a large degree, art as a computer-based audiovisual experience rendered in real time.

obituary_latte 8y ago

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 8y ago
Came here to say this
- tern 8y ago
  In the same tradition: http://mariuswatz.com/ http://mariuswatz.com/

jghjg 8y ago

So if a modern artist paints random shit they are crap but if a computer does it, it's cool because durr computers are kool long live hackerz

userbinator 8y ago

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/raymarchingdf.htm http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarching... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

tinco 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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?

crucialfelix 8y ago

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.

tinco 8y ago
I think you can seperate these two aspects of Kandinsky or Ernst's works. On one side the skill and aesthetics of the artwork, and on the other side the reflection of their times and circumstances. We've established that Naon, Kandinsky and Ernst make beautiful artworks. So it makes sense to compare them on their aesthetics if they have similarities. When it comes to the 'depth' you are speaking of, the modernists are pushing back against their environments and their history, struggling and competing with their contemporaries. This makes the art 'live' and gives it uniqueness. Never again can someone have the exact same circumstances and history of Kandinsky, those times are simply over. Naon has his own history and his own circumstances. Maybe now they may seem shallow, but time will tell if his time and experience was unique, and his artwork a reflection of it. As you say he is young, maybe there is still more inside of him to grow and come out. But I have to say I have not seen generative art that good before. If nothing else, it might be the best we've got to challenge the next generation of generative AI art with.
- tern 8y ago
  We can already suggest a simple interpretation: generative art is more of a craft tradition akin to illustration and what is traditionally called the "decorative" or "applied" arts. One unpopular litmus test for whether a practice might be appropriately categorized as "fine art" or "contemporary art" is to look at the economic relationships and institutions involved. "Art" with a capital A tends to be supported exclusively by wealthy patrons, with some help from governments, foundations, and non-profits. Artists sell their work through galleries, or directly to their patrons, and as they age they either succeed or fail to enter a "mid-career artist" phase, where their work becomes canonized through reviews in particular publications, inclusion in group shows, and solo shows at "important" institutions. Anything outside of this very specific system is difficult to call "Art" with a capital A. It's worth noting that this mode of production is overwhelmingly minor in comparison with modes of production post-Internet. Memes, 4chan, YouTube, DeviantArt, art produced in conjunction with the advertising industry, etc. completely eclipse "Art" today, and it's difficult to speak authoritatively of any kind of canon of "art" in general. However, it's clear that when we compare the "art" of today to the "Art" of the past that we see in the great museums of the past, we are comparing fundamentally different things.

bhouston 8y ago

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

jacquesm 8y ago
+1 416 977 8000
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  The butter donut reminds me of Alaska.

samfriedman 8y ago

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.

deleted 8y ago
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megamindbrian2 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Check out Signed Distance Fields (SDF) on Shadertoy.
soared 8y ago
No Man's Sky is similar. Effectively unlimited procedurally generated planets, with unique flora/fauna/terrain/etc.
CmdrKrool 8y ago
One of the currently-trending productions on Shadertoy happens to be this recreation of the opening of Unreal, all procedurally generated (except for the geometry, though you can certainly find procedurally generated geometry elsewhere on that site). https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ls2SDD https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ls2SDD
aggerdom 8y ago
Take a look at an old PS1 game called LSD: Dream Emulator that did this to interesting effect. Alt J used a screenshot from it for cover art of one of their albums.

smrtinsert 8y ago

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

d--b 8y ago

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 8y ago
> 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.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Not just beauty. Also expression, and emotional appeal. Some very ugly paintings and sculptures speak to whole generations about injustice etc. Maybe generative art fails there too, I don't know.
  - hodwic 8y ago
    Ugliness is not the opposite of beauty. Ugliness is a form of beauty, or at least its necessary foil. This has been understood for thousands of years. See Laocoön and His Sons, one of the most beautiful works of art in the human tradition, because of the tragic ugliness therein. See Hotel Rwanda, one of the most beautiful films ever made, because of the tragic ugliness therein. Injustice in art often builds the beauty. If there was only injustice, with nothing transcendent about it, it would not stand up as a work of art. It would be brutality porn. Take that most famous picture of slavery, the scarred photo of a slave's back. The picture's power derives not just from the scars, a record of his mistreatment, but also from his uprightness and strength. There would be nothing transcendent or beautiful in it were it a photo of a man reduced to nothing. It would not be art. Similarly, the photo of the Chinese man in front of tanks in Tienanmen square is not just about the brutality of communism, but also the strength of the individual. If the photo was merely of a man crushed under a tank, it would scarcely be art. At best it would be journalism, but more likely it would be mere violence porn.

puzzle 8y ago

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

rices 8y ago

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 8y ago
Concentric looks really great! It actually has decent variation

deleted 8y ago

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holdenc 8y ago

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&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&l... 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 8y ago
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 8y ago

calebm 8y ago

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.

Anonymous4C54D6 8y ago

You can't say generative art without saying demoscene.

tern 8y ago
Both generative art and the demoscene were preceded by decades of work with their own histories.

daveguy 8y ago

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.

deleted 8y ago

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quxbar 8y ago

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.

tern 8y ago

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/139740/8aec5cb9da76a6194bfc5184a427c5b3.pdf?1376461955 https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da... - 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 8y ago
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.
yaw 8y ago
- http://recodeproject.com/ http://recodeproject.com/ (reinterpretations of early generative art)
tern 8y ago
- https://web.archive.org/web/20081212130233/http://www.generatorx.no:80/category/generative-art/ https://web.archive.org/web/20081212130233/http://www.genera...

throwaway777i 8y ago

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

person_of_color 8y ago

Best comment thread on HN in sometime