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This feels too prescriptive. Can you really create such a sweeping narrative (of the meta-narrative) encompassing the entire world of "art" over the past 75 yea

This feels too prescriptive. Can you really create such a sweeping narrative (of the meta-narrative) encompassing the entire world of "art" over the past 75 years? The meta-narrative is great but it's not everything. Personally I'm not very inspired by the Newman piece, and the bit about the masking tape makes it only marginally more interesting to me - it doesn't necessarily tell a story, it just reveals the technique. Here is a piece of generative art I made [1]. The story is that I saw these tiles on the clearance rack in Ikea, and I figured they could make some nice patterns, and when I laid them out I realized there were many good ones and I couldn't choose just one, so I made a program to simulate changing patterns. However, none of that comes through in the work itself, there aren't really imperfections or human touches, it's based entirely on simple rules. You might easily dump it into the screensaver category, but I find the endless patterns that emerge out of such a system to be compelling. Would be very grateful if you gave it a look and shared your thoughts. [1] http://jamesrowen.me/tiles/ http://jamesrowen.me/tiles/

holdenc 8y ago
I actually prefer your art to the art shown in the article. But, I would not call your artwork generative. However, it is programatic and animated. And could be easily created by the ideas of op art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op_art Op art, like your art, is created out of a fascination for illusory space and patterns. It's a footnote to modernist and geometric abstract painting. The background you provide on the piece informs it well. And a viewer could deduce the piece was made by a fascination with simple formal relationships. This to me is the backstory, and the meta-narrative.
- resu_nimda 8y ago
  Thanks for the comments. My understanding was that generative was synonymous with algorithmic/programmatic. Was not aware of op art but I certainly see the connection.
  - holdenc 8y ago
    I played with this a little more. And, it likely is more generative than my first impression. Especially the Spiral example that seems to transform the composition almost autonomously. Not sure how serious you are about it, but I think it's definitely some of the better programatic art I have seen, speaking from a fine art/academic perspective here. It's very reductive and simple, and deals with some very basic relationships in visually powerful ways. Best of luck. Good share!
    - resu_nimda 8y ago
      The spiral mode was discovered entirely by accident, when I introduced a bug into the translation/rotation code. What you see when first entering the mode (or using the o6 preset) is pretty much exactly what I saw then. I sat there giggling uncontrollably; it was so bizarre and unexpected, yet compelling. In that sense I would agree that it is the most generative mode. From there I continued developing the tools to modulate and navigate it to find other interesting parts. I realized it was becoming a kind of fractal viewer. I don't have a formal background in art, but based on what I have seen in this area, I do think the project is somewhat novel and worthy of interest, and I have ideas about how it could be adapted into an interactive gallery installation (each mode projected onto a different wall, each with a custom physical control panel). I have hesitated to share it so far because of a few issues on the technical side (untenable framerate on slower machines, UI is broken on mobile). I'm also not sure the UX is dialed, I want it to be minimal and somewhat mysterious, inviting the user to play with the controls, but not so cryptic that they give up before seeing what it can do, hence the somewhat inelegant tutorial bubbles (I started with a simple pulsing glow on certain buttons but people didn't even notice it). If you have any suggestions or thoughts on these matters I would be all ears :) jamesrowen@gmail.com

holdenc 8y ago

I actually prefer your art to the art shown in the article. But, I would not call your artwork generative. However, it is programatic and animated. And could be easily created by the ideas of op art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op_art Op art, like your art, is created out of a fascination for illusory space and patterns. It's a footnote to modernist and geometric abstract painting. The background you provide on the piece informs it well. And a viewer could deduce the piece was made by a fascination with simple formal relationships. This to me is the backstory, and the meta-narrative.

resu_nimda 8y ago
Thanks for the comments. My understanding was that generative was synonymous with algorithmic/programmatic. Was not aware of op art but I certainly see the connection.
- holdenc 8y ago
  I played with this a little more. And, it likely is more generative than my first impression. Especially the Spiral example that seems to transform the composition almost autonomously. Not sure how serious you are about it, but I think it's definitely some of the better programatic art I have seen, speaking from a fine art/academic perspective here. It's very reductive and simple, and deals with some very basic relationships in visually powerful ways. Best of luck. Good share!
  - resu_nimda 8y ago
    The spiral mode was discovered entirely by accident, when I introduced a bug into the translation/rotation code. What you see when first entering the mode (or using the o6 preset) is pretty much exactly what I saw then. I sat there giggling uncontrollably; it was so bizarre and unexpected, yet compelling. In that sense I would agree that it is the most generative mode. From there I continued developing the tools to modulate and navigate it to find other interesting parts. I realized it was becoming a kind of fractal viewer. I don't have a formal background in art, but based on what I have seen in this area, I do think the project is somewhat novel and worthy of interest, and I have ideas about how it could be adapted into an interactive gallery installation (each mode projected onto a different wall, each with a custom physical control panel). I have hesitated to share it so far because of a few issues on the technical side (untenable framerate on slower machines, UI is broken on mobile). I'm also not sure the UX is dialed, I want it to be minimal and somewhat mysterious, inviting the user to play with the controls, but not so cryptic that they give up before seeing what it can do, hence the somewhat inelegant tutorial bubbles (I started with a simple pulsing glow on certain buttons but people didn't even notice it). If you have any suggestions or thoughts on these matters I would be all ears :) jamesrowen@gmail.com