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Jacksonpollock.org (2003)
- Thorentis 6y agoIf a computer can generate something of equal quality without human input, I don't consider it art. Sure, CGI looks realistic. But realistic imagery is not enough for something to be art, and neither is random splashes of color. There is nothing here that points to beauty, higher values, truth, or anything. If it helps you zone out, sure, but again, not art. White noises helps some people zone out. This is basically white noise with extra steps. And Im referring to Pollock's work. This website is arguably more artistic than his painting.
- harshitaneja 6y agoI am a huge fan of The Art Assignment on youtube. I came in as a skeptic of modern art but grew to appreciate it and with it my notions of what I consider art or work in general. Jackson Pollock video essay[0] is worth watching as well. [0] https://youtu.be/1U19VOF4qfs https://youtu.be/1U19VOF4qfs
- tomcam 6y agoSurprisingly fun. Double-click or press space to clear the image. Also, the character graphics in the comments alone are amazing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- darth_avocado 6y agoAhh my cat running over my mouse accidentally created a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Who knew modern art was so easy.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoSeeing as it was 70 years ago, should we still call it "modern" art or is that now an era — like mid-century modern.
- goto11 6y agoModern is just the name of the genre. Like "art nouveau" is a genre which similarly is not very new anymore!
- detaro 6y agoIt is an era, but the era is called "modern art".
- chickenpotpie 6y agoModern != contemporary
- pmoriarty 6y agoMuch of the value of Pollock's work is that he did that kind of work first. Though I'm not sure why he had to repeat himself once he made his first action painting. I have a lot more respect for artists like Marcel Duchamp, who was always developing in radically new directions and did not like to repeat himself, in great contrast to one-trick ponies like Pollock.
- mumblerino 6y agoThe Canvas API didn’t exist in 2003 so I’m not sure what that 2003 in the title is for. Did this site exist in Flash before 2006?
- redmagic 6y agoThis is a piece by Miltos Manetas. It was created in Flash initially. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltos_Manetas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltos_Manetas. If you like this kind of work another well known artist in this space is Rafael Rozendaal https://web.archive.org/web/20110529173830/http://www.superneen.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110529173830/http://www.supern...
- wombatmobile 6y agoWhen you click M he signs it
- indosauros 6y agoYes, visiting the 2003 version in the Wayback Machine prompts to download a swf
- dang 6y agoI found 2003 here: https://web.archive.org/web/20111215141056/http://www.manetas.com/internet https://web.archive.org/web/20111215141056/http://www.maneta...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- umvi 6y agoNeat. Art snobs always defend Pollock by claiming it's actually really difficult to forge a true Pollock and that even though it looks easy, real Pollock paintings have subtleties that are impossible to reproduce unless you've practiced for a long time. I say... who cares. If it's easy to imitate something and get 90+% of the way with no skill or practice, then the art isn't worth admiring.
- GGfpc 6y agoI tend to think that art should be admired because it's beautiful and not because it's difficult to reproduce
- Dirlewanger 6y agoPeople find it and other post-modernist works "beautiful" mainly because it pisses off the previous generation of artists. It has no other reason for existing otherwise. It's bereft of any soul or meaning. David Foster Wallace highlights this best.
- erulabs 6y agoI can't think of less meaningful information than why someone believes why someone else believes something is beautiful. How could you possibly know that?
- Bodell 6y agoThis reeks of literal illiteracy, as well as a lack of visual aesthetic literacy. I'm not trying to sling mud here but I'd be really embarrassed by this if I were you. This is near saying that jazz music is just noise, despite whoever saying it likely not being able to even keep up with a basic chord chart. Or possibly it would be more appropriate, to imagine someone able to do a quick and dirty script in python, not understanding that CPU architecture is more nuanced and complicated simply because they know nothing about it. One is not necessarily better than the other, but you yourself are the one losing out from your inability to appreciate things outside of your comfort zone.
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- tW4r 6y agoI opened the website on my phone and was waiting for it to load for a good couple of minutes as it was a white blank page. Then I thought that maybe I need to scroll down, as soon as I touched the screen I realized it. What a nice way to discover functionality accidentally.
- Igelau 6y agoI was worried it had been hugged to death.
- divbzero 6y agoIt’s a sad commentary on the state of the web that (a) we’d consider waiting a good couple of minutes for a website to load, and (b) scrolling down to sidestep rendering issues is a reasonable tactic.
- surround 6y agoSometimes my ad blocker blanks the page so I thought the same thing.
- motohagiography 6y agoGreat sample data set for seeding a brute force search space to crack "move mouse for entropy" PRNG seeds?
- erulabs 6y agoPollock is wonderful, particularly in person. But more than I enjoy the art (Silver Over Black, White, Yellow, and Red in person is enough to bring me to tears), I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades. I personally find it wonderful and beautiful - the sf-tech crowds mocking the abstract and psychedelic tend to be a bit unaware where the world they both live and work in came from!
- martythemaniak 6y agoIndeed. Despite multiple assurances that they could have done it as well, I'm still not aware of any modern art coming out of HN. I too could have invented calculus (after learning about it in school).
- JadeNB 6y ago> I too could have invented calculus (after learning about it in school). Incidentally, this is written as if it's obvious, but it's not at all a given that you can invent something even after you've been taught it. If you can, then it's a serious credit to your teacher.
- msla 6y ago> I'm still not aware of any modern art coming out of HN. You think software isn't art?
- alextheparrot 6y agoI suppose there is a reason they call software’s thinking artificial intelligence if we’re getting into the details
- msla 6y agoWhat are you talking about?
- dang 6y agoAll: a lot of comments in this thread are sneering at something: some person, some group, someone's work, someone's comments, or the rest of the community. Please don't do that on HN, even in response to sneers by others. It feels justified and maybe brings relief, but it fills the thread with nasty fumes and makes for a place no one can really enjoy. It's not in any of our interests. Curiosity, which we're trying for here, doesn't sneer. It is open, more genuinely satisfying, and makes for a place that's better for everyone. That's in all of our interests. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fermienrico 6y agoI don't think its that bad @dang :) There is no nationalism and politics, just people debating about art with passion. I kind of found it interesting and fun to see both sides debating. "Conservatives" - anti-Pollock clan argue that art must have inherit beauty and skill to produce. "Liberals" - pro-Pollock folks argue that the whole definition of art is up for grabs. :)
- Cactus2018 6y agoNumbers set grey scale. Letters set colors (b=blue, r=red, y=yellow, etc). Mouse click sets random color. Spacebar or double-click resets canvas.
- meh206 6y agoThat was my best 2 minutes of randomization all week
- pmoriarty 6y agoI just saw an interesting video on "How Jackson Pollock became so overrated."[1] Summary: It was due to the enormous influence of a single critic who was a Pollock fan. As an artist, I find it incredibly sad that critics and other gatekeepers (such as museum curators and gallery owners) have any influence at all. Fortunately, these days the need for such gatekeepers is diminishing, as artists can get their art (at least in digital form) directly in front of their audience, though at the same time new gatekeepers like search engines and platform owners are arising. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ
- lemmsjid 6y agoI think there's a certain amount of risk each artist needs to take, in any medium, where on one side you see the intentionally accessible art of the television show, and on the other side you see art that challenges the audience in some way: be it obscure, or inherently referential, or historically situated. I love challenging art, but without an art history degree I often can't appreciate it fully without also immersing myself in some critical writing on it. Challenging art almost need to be paired with critics who can provide useful metaphors, historical contexts, or what-have-you to help appreciate the art. Part of my appreciation of challenging works of art comes from reading interesting critical appraisals of them. In those situations I think of the critics and the artists as being somewhat intertwined. I quite agree on the gatekeeper side of things, e.g. critiques who are mainly concerned with questions of taste and judgement, where art that challenges certain norms is judged poorly.
- pmoriarty 6y agoThere is a role for art education, and for providing context in which art can be understood. However, the hierarchical ranking of artists by critics in to "great" and "minor" is often just a matter of taste and opinion, and that's what I object to. I can't count the number of times I've gone in to famous museums and galleries and found them stocked to the gills with art that I considered absolute and utter garbage. Now, of course the curators, critics, and gallery owners who extol such art have a different opinion of this art than I do, or they wouldn't have put it in to their museums and galleries, but really who's to say their opinion is any better than anyone else's?
- alextheparrot 6y agoNo one accuses me of being insane for going to a park bench and watching cranes and ducks skim across the river and just think. Why is it controversial for someone to like Pollock’s paintings which give the same type of space? Maybe they don’t have intrinsic meaning, but a lot of the world doesn’t. Maybe they have meaning from their context, maybe the world does as well. At the end of the day, to me they are provocative and inspirational and help me think and I value thinking so I value Pollock’s paintings. Especially insofar as the paintings aren’t encumbered by the heavy realist Americana that Pollock reacts against from his studies with Thomas Benton (Though I do like Benton’s paintings as well).
- BelleOfTheBall 6y agoA lot of the post-war abstractionists are treated that way by people. From de Kooning to Reinhardt to Yayoi Kusama, they all get dismissed for one thing or another but I think all of them have some unique stylistic choices that breathe life into their art, Kusama in particular. They aren't traditional or easy to love, in fact, they are much easier to just scoff at. But the artists put serious thought into each work and came in with an idea and a vision and, a lot of the time, they realized those in truly unique ways. Just because they're not "pretty" or "technically impressive" doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art" At this point is there even anything at all that can't be considered to be art? The word has become almost meaningless.
- ska 6y agoThat's an idea that has probably been around as long as humans have been making art (i.e. as long as humans).
- Tainnor 6y ago"Certain disciples of the new school, much occupying themselves with the measured dividing of the tempora, display their prolation in notes that are new to us, preferring to devise new methods of their own rather than to continue singing in the old way. Therefore the music of the Divine Office is disturbed with notes of these small values. Moreover, they hinder the melody with hockets, they deprave them with descants, and sometimes they pad them out with upper parts made out of secular songs. The result is that they often seem to be losing sight of the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual, and forget what it is that they are burying under their superstructures. They may become entirely ignorant of the ecclesiastical modes, which they have already ceased to distinguish and the limits of which they abuse in the prolixity of their notes. The modest rise and temperate descents of plainsong, by which the modes themselves are recognized, are entirely obscured. The voices move incessantly to and fro, intoxicating rather than soothing the ear, while the singers themselves try to convey the emotion of the music by their gestures. The consequence of all this is that devotion, the true aim of all worship, is neglected, and wantonness, which ought to be eschewed, increases." - Pope John XXII, docta sanctorum patrum, ca. 1324
- zlidka 6y agoI like it.
- mobilemidget 6y agoI do too! And initially had to broom my brain, who is this pollock person again?... then clicked the site, took 2ms to to revive brain cells :)
- acomjean 6y agoI love the ui. You stop moving and its goes from line to blob...
- validuser 6y agoDoes it redraw the entire thing every frame? It seems to get slower the longer you draw.
- Cockbrand 6y agoThere used to be a 99¢ app on the iOS app store which did pretty much the same as this site. I loved it a lot, but unfortunately, it was gone from the app store some day.
- grahamburger 6y agoright-click -> view-image gives a .png of your created image to save. Nicely done.
- keiferski 6y agoFor those who question Pollock’s artistry - see his paintings in person first. They have a mesmerizing quality that grabs you from across the room. Looking at them, it’s easy to get lost in a sort of meditative trance, which also happens with Rothko (another ‘my kid could do that’ artist.)
- gfxgirl 6y agoHow much of that is because of skill as an artist vs just venue and size. In other words what other things would be just as interesting if presented similarly.
- keiferski 6y agoThis is easy to test: there are hundreds of other artworks in the museum. Very few have the same pull as a Pollock, IMO.
- elymar 6y agoI get teary eyed when I see Pollock paintings in person. Couldn’t tell you why but they are powerful.
- Minor49er 6y agoA lot of people also don't realize that Pollock's wife was essentially the curator of his work. He would complete a painting and have her approve it. There have been tons of pieces that we haven't been able to see simply because they didn't pass this test.
- hsikka 6y agoWhat a wonderful surprise! I remember playing with this back in 3rd and 4th grade during our computer lab, it was an absolute pleasure. I haven't seen it in over 15 years, and am just floored by how timeless this is. It just so happened that I walked by my old elementary school on Monday of this week. What a strange coincidence. Truly a joyful memory.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoUsing this site just leaves me feeling bored and kind of annoyed, just like a pollack painting! I was just moving the mouse around thinking "Man, this is going to take all day. I don't have time for this. I'm mortal." It's so weird, because I haven't felt that way for a long time. I've been making good life choices so far, up until I clicked on that website, and I just had to go away and do something else.
- thisisauserid 6y agoThis site reminded you of your mortality and caused you to contemplate your life choices? Heavy, man.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoI get the same reaction from the DMV, but no one puts them in a museum.
- rectang 6y agoPollack's works have an extreme textural effect when seen in person that can't be conveyed with flat media like computer screens or printed reproductions — they are three dimensional, because the paint blobs are thick, and sharp. This interactive site is a beautiful and intense way to experience Pollack. If you get the chance, I hope you also get to experience Pollack's works live and in the flesh.
- vajrabum 6y agoLove the website. I'm not sure how I missed that when it came out. this site shows some of the evolution of Jackson Pollock's work. In it you can see him moving from imitation of the masters of earlier 20th century art to his own unmistakable thing. Clark Terry, a revered jazz trumpet player and teacher famously said "Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate." That same process can be seen here. http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/pollock1.html http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/pollock1.html
- hodgesrm 6y agoThe site is absolutely delightful. You also get the feeling after having fun for a while that there's much more art in Pollock's canvases than it first appeared. :) edit: fixed typo
- vajrabum 6y agoHere's another website which shows a work that he made after he stopped making the drip paintings he was famous for. http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=17930 http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=17930
- claytongulick 6y agoI did this years ago to score some internet points. Sort of a similar concept: http://ratiosoftware.com/html5/autopollock/autopollock.html http://ratiosoftware.com/html5/autopollock/autopollock.html
- phaus 6y agoIts disappointing to me how this community responds to Jackson Pollack. Most of the Pollack supporter's comments seem to assume that if a person doesn't think he's a genius of incredible technical ability, then that means that person is automatically an ignorant person that's making wild, uninformed, random guesses about how art is created. I think Pollack's paintings are aesthetically pleasing. I'm not a professional artist, however I am an art and art history hobbyist. I have been for decades. I like his paintings. I don't, however, think they are special or that he was an artistic genius whose paintings should have broken the record at one point for the most expensive work of art ever sold. That's OK though, we all have different tastes and a guy with $100 million just happened to have different tastes from this guy with no millions. However, my opinion isn't random or uninformed. I know how a painting is created. How the surfaces are prepared. How preparatory drawings and smaller studies are done. How the final drawing is made. How the underpainting is done. My art is pretty bad compared to professionals. However, studying it for decades means I've watched actual masters do their thing for a countless number of hours. I know how the Italian masters created their works of art in great detail. I know how Pollack created his. The level of technical skill required to become a master of classical realism is absurd. Pollack's strength was executing and publishing an idea no one had done before. In the grand scheme of all of art, I don't think that's a particularly strong strength when compared to masters of classical realism. My opinion is based on an intimate knowledge of what it takes to be that good. If you disagree with my conclusion that's fine and reasonable but to pretend that everyone doesn't consider him a highly skilled genius is ignorant is in itself pretty ignorant. If I wanted to create a work like Pollack's, there would likely be a learning curve, but we aren't talking the same amount of practice and preparation that classically trained artists require to even be semi-competent. Like I said before, the biggest strength of the work he is known for was originality, not technical competence. He might have also been technically competent as an artist, but when I look at the works that made him famous I don't see it. I'd be willing to hang all kinds of abstract / modern / postmodern art on my wall because it adds color, sometimes has great composition, and is aesthetically pleasing. However, most of it just isn't meaningful to me in the same way that other genres of art are like classical realism and impressionism. I don't think anyone should feel like that's a personal attack on their preferences. I'm not missing something, it just has a different effect on me. If you don't like classical realism you aren't missing something either, you just like different things.
- wombatmobile 6y ago“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin
- num 6y agoDid anyone else appreciate the ANSI art embedded in the HTML document at the end of the body?
- dymax78 6y agoThis site is fantastic, thanks for sharing.