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Jacksonpollock.org (2003)
- memalign 2y agoThe page looks blank so click/tap to fill it in…!
- codr7 2y agoCool, but needs color.
- NAHWheatCracker 2y agoClick and it changes colors.
- cbarrick 2y agoFun thing! The double-click to clear is too sensitive for me. I keep accidentally clearing when I try to go fast.
- Zanni 2y agoFun, but more suggestive of Steadman (illustrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and other things) than Pollock: https://www.npr.org/2014/04/27/307285367/artist-ralph-steadman-a-nice-man-for-a-pictorial-assassin https://www.npr.org/2014/04/27/307285367/artist-ralph-steadm...
- pkdpic 2y agoAgreed, super cool project. All it seems like it would need for a full pollock vibe would be a color palette selector. And maybe this audio track on loop and a transparent overlay of animated cigarette smoke. Great url. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzppQU-lqA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzppQU-lqA
- zrail 2y agoAlso maybe a random cigarette butt once in a while.
- serf 2y agoI disagree. Pollock used a lot of connected ink splotches, Steadman's 'inkling' stuff is usually large white-space separated splotches, an effect that is impossible with this tool. also Steadman moved away from that eventually, whereas Pollock leaned into it until death. Moreover Pollocks' art was the splotches, whereas it was usually an accoutrement for Steadman around a different -- usually framed -- perspective.
- tanseydavid 2y agoAgreed. The results look more Steadman-like.
- hifikuno 2y agoHah! I waited far too long for the page to load. It wasn't until I moved my mouse to another window that I realized.
- cjonas 2y agoSame here! Figured it was the HN hug of death and left.
- tolerance 2y agoI know it’s early but it’s funny to note the difference between the comments here so far and what the discussion was like in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269430
- randall 2y agowow. that’s awesome. i don’t understand why but i’m happy.
- milesrout 2y ago[flagged]
- yieldcrv 2y agoIt looks like people are more appreciate of everyone’s ability to express themselves adequately and garner influence to share very onbrand with how this debate has gone so far! I’m glad
- daneel_w 2y agoOf topics like these my father, a lover of all things art and photography, would say: "It doesn't matter if it's bad, and it doesn't matter that anyone can do it; he was the one who did it first."
- bigstrat2003 2y agoI don't agree with your dad. Whether something is good (a notoriously loaded question) and whether it's easy for anyone to do themselves matter a great deal. Being the first person to do something abhorrent would not be praiseworthy, nor would being the first to do something uninteresting. Pollock may well have been the first to do what he did, but it is still low effort slop that any three year old could trivially reproduce. Therefore he gets no points for being first, because he didn't do something worth doing to begin with.
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- yapyap 2y agolol not gonna lie I thought it got the HN hug of death at first
- amelius 2y agoReminds me of the early days of Javascript when every other website had a gimmick like this one.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cattown 2y agoPeople seem confused about the UI. You don't need to click, just move. Most keys on the keyboard correspond to a color. Shift + those keys sets the background. I like it that there's no hint, it just rewards exploration and experimentation.
- cactusplant7374 2y agoClicking changes the color too.
- macintux 2y agoLaunching it on an iPad was a mystery. I assumed it was suffering from the HN hug of death until I tried to swipe back.
- Wistar 2y agoMe, too. Thought a script failed to fire on iPad/Safari.
- Deprogrammer9 2y agoit got old fast lol but for a few minutes I was into it.
- quanto 2y agoWhat a wonderful demonstration of how a simple UI can create so much joy. Utility to Kolmogorov complexity ratio is quite high on this one.
- every 2y agoI find it interesting that Pollock was a student of the American Regionalist Thomas Hart Benton[1]. No two artists could have been more unalike... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_(painter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_(painter)
- antgonzales 2y agoJackson Pollock's style evolved throughout his life. The Whitney had a show with his early works and it's nothing like his splatter painting style we all know[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/nyregion/a-review-of-men-of-fire-jose-clemente-orozco-and-jackson-pollock-in-east-hampton.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/nyregion/a-review-of-men-...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- marcus0x62 2y agoI wonder what the art dealers in Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollack[0] would think of this? 0 - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487092 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487092
- julianz 2y agoIt's cool, but that's definitely a Ralph Steadman background generator, much more than Pollock.
- mmoustafa 2y agoFun! Reminds me of spending a week in 2012 trying to find the perfect blackboard chalk effect http://mmoustafa.com/experiments/chalk/ http://mmoustafa.com/experiments/chalk/ After many experiments, the most realistic was painting a thick line and then erasing tiny randomly sized rectangles out of it.
- buggy6257 2y agoI need this combined with Excalidraw somehow and I would be so happy. There's something so viscerally satisfying about chalkboards, even virtual. Thanks for this! You did a phenomenal job on the chalk effect.
- bleakenthusiasm 2y agoIt looks really good. Like, really good. I have one thing that throws me, though: if you keep drawing over the same section, you don't get more coverage. It always looks like the first pass. But I'm so surprised at how well this works to emulate chalk.
- KTibow 2y agoIt seems the only thing that changes how covered a section is the speed you go over it with.
- revorad 2y agoThis is so cool! It'd be even more fun if it had sound effects.
- dmd 2y agoYou're a monster.
- gilleain 2y agoHah I did something similar around the same time, using random white/gray/black pixels (apparently, I don't remember any details any more!) https://gilleain.blogspot.com/2008/11/chalky.html https://gilleain.blogspot.com/2008/11/chalky.html
- timkpaine 2y agoIn case anyone wants to do one themselves (and learn Clojure), I think this was posted on HN previously: https://tombooth.co.uk/painting-in-clojure/ https://tombooth.co.uk/painting-in-clojure/
- msla 2y agoHere's a topic I don't see people engaging with: I could in principle make the same kinds of completely abstract paintings Pollock did, but if I do it, it won't be art because I'm not in the art world. I have no access to galleries, I have no patrons, and I generally don't move in those circles, so I have no ability to be taken seriously for doing it.
- plufz 2y agoDo you think simply copying a 70 year old idea would make you a world famous artist if you had more connections in art? (Not that abstract painting really describes what made Pollock famous, action painting is obviously it.)
- msla 2y ago> Do you think simply copying a 70 year old idea would make you a world famous artist if you had more connections in art? No, I meant like Pollock in terms of being completely non-representational.
- ggm 2y agoThere are now suggestions he buried representational subjects in the field. Suggestions his bipolar made it happen and then get buried. I tend to think it's post hoc reasoning by bored art critics and Pareidolia.
- schneems 2y agoI think part of what makes an artist stand out in a medium like this is that they are able to stand out in a medium like this. Going and seeing something like “the fountain” (Duchamp) is surely accompanied by many people remarking “I could have made that” and it could be true, but they didn’t. And that’s the difference. To some degree that accessibility makes some of these things even more interesting. I brought up a Dadaism piece on purpose. In fascism, one tool of the leaders was to declare some art pure and acceptable and some as “not art.” Dadaism was a rebuke of the idea: that authority can or cannot tell us what art is and isn’t. Dadaism is intentionally absurdist. And it’s that quality that many would use to discredit it, is the very thing that makes it so powerful (to some). Not saying that pollock is playing with absurdism, but saying that sometimes the things that make something “not art” or “not interesting” to one person are the things that elevate it to another. Not sure if that’s what you were asking, but that’s a riff I was inspired to share.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI want this but multitouch so badly.
- Sn0wCoder 2y agoThe Paper.js library is neat if you like this site (found it looking through the source). http://paperjs.org/ http://paperjs.org/
- CaramelGrudge 2y agoI’ve played a lot with this years ago. Could have been between 10 and 15 years back even! Didn’t know it still existed. Thanks for sharing
- vasco 2y agoMy portrait https://imgur.com/a/SKrexZb https://imgur.com/a/SKrexZb
- femto 2y agoOn a tangent, the floor of Pollock's studio is an artwork in its own right: https://aaqeastend.com/contents/aaq-portfolio-jackson-pollocks-studio-floor-1947-1952-uncovered-1987-photo-for-moma-1998/ https://aaqeastend.com/contents/aaq-portfolio-jackson-polloc...
- dang 2y agoWow, that would make a great HN submission in its own right—though not anytime soon! one has to let the hivemind caches clear first.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y agoOn the other hand, when brick and mortar stores of the same kind are located near each other they all sell more. And we often see two of the same topics thriving on the HN front page.
- DyslexicAtheist 2y agosay no more.
- dang 2y ago> we often see two of the same topics thriving on the HN front page Most often that would be a failure on our part. But it's good for the mods to fail sometimes.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y agoI meant more: two of the same category of thing, where a submission will spur interest in closely related submissions, or something tangential related. Like, say, a submission on Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s art follow by a submission on the 27 Club.
- dang 2y agoOh yes—we call those follow-ups and tend to downweight them for reasons explained in various posts: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=follow-up%20downweight&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Usually the best place for such links is in the comments of the existing thread. Of course, once enough time has gone by, such links can become first-rate submissions in their own right!
- adamredwoods 2y agoI absolutely love this and here's why: many people who criticize art as being "child's doodles" lack the experience and process of art. Education raises all boats. This is that type of simple education. So now, I hope every here tries to make their own Pollock art. https://www.moma.org/artists/4675-jackson-pollock https://www.moma.org/artists/4675-jackson-pollock
- ilbeeper 2y agoBecause Pollock would smash it with a masterpiece right out of his cellphone? This is cute but not a great device to reveal the truth to the uneducated
- adamredwoods 2y agoNope. To think to is create. I want more people to think. Trying to make a masterpiece with this is not the point.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoI think what he would do is better than what most others would. This reminds me of something that happened to me in the early 90s. I went to a local computer show (where local distributors would show new hardware) with a friend who's an artist. There was a booth with a color Mac, probably an LC or something like that, running Mac Paint. People were doodling on it, playing around with the spray can and the text tool, and it looked like random stuff thrown on a canvas. Not having a computer at home, my friend was curious, and queued to play with it. When my friend got a turn on the Mac, first time on a Mac using Mac Paint, he made a drawing that genuinely looked like a piece of art. If there had been a printer nearby, I could have printed it out and put it on my wall, and nobody would have thought that this was a somebody's first time using Mac Paint. Art is a genuine skill, and you will see the difference between an artist and a random person regardless of the canvas they use. I guess this also reminds me of the introduction of the Amiga, with Warhol using the paint can to fill in sections of a photo of Debbie Harry. Technically, this is something everybody can do, but Warhol knew which colors to pick, which sections to color, and which choices to make to create something that actually looks great.
- osehgol 2y agoabsolutely wonderful, thank you
- osehgol 2y ago[dupe]
- msuvakov 2y ago___ ___ ___ ___ / /\ ___ / /\ ___ / /\ / /\ / /::| /__/\ / /:/ /__/\ / /::\ / /::\ / /:|:| \__\:\ / /:/ \ \:\ / /:/\:\ /__/:/\:\ / /:/|:|__ / /::\ / /:/ \__\:\ / /:/ \:\ _\_ \:\ \:\ /__/:/_|::::\ __/ /:/\/ /__/:/ / /::\ /__/:/ \__\:\ /__/\ \:\ \:\ \__\/ /~~/:/ /__/\/:/~~ \ \:\ / /:/\:\ \ \:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \:\_\/ / /:/ \ \::/ \ \:\ / /:/__\/ \ \:\ /:/ \ \:\_\:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ /__/:/ \ \:\/:/ \ \:\/:/ /__/:/ \__\/ \ \:\ \__\/ \ \::/ \ \::/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/
- emoprincejack 2y agowhy is this front page on HN
- Deprogrammer9 2y agoThe CIA runs hacker news.
- bdangubic 2y agoif you have to ask this question you are in a wrong place :)
- helsinki 2y agoMake this a Vision Pro app, please.
- rexpop 2y agoFun fact! Jackson Pollock, along with other abstract expressionists, was a CIA propaganda asset! The CIA believed that abstract expressionism, with its unbound and individualistic style, could be associated with American freedoms, so they secretly funded the "Congress for Cultural Freedom", an anti-communist advocacy group that promoted American arts and culture, including abstract expressionism, through international art shows and publications. Art or writings that touched on US racism (Pollock was contemporaneous with numerous lynchings) and imperialism (Guatemala, Iran, Greece, Korea) were, of course, passed over. Ever since I learned this, I have lost all emotional appreciation for his works. While before they seemed free, now they seem cheap.
- Deprogrammer9 2y agoThey killed him knowing his art would skyrocket in price. They still have his art on their walls to this day.
- rexpop 2y agoThis is a vague and baseless conspiracy theory.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoIt was a money laundering scheme.
- dang 2y agoRelated: Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36155204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36155204 - June 2023 (332 comments) https://www.openculture.com/2023/10/how-the-cia-secretly-used-jackson-pollock-other-abstract-expressionists-to-fight-the-cold-war.html https://www.openculture.com/2023/10/how-the-cia-secretly-use... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10462602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10462602
- skrebbel 2y ago> Ever since I learned this, I have lost all emotional appreciation for his works. While before they seemed free, now they seem cheap. I don't understand this. Because he got paid for it, the work is cheap? Do you think he would've made different works if the CIA hadn't funded his art shows? I struggle to imagine what a Pollock "about" racism would look like, and how the CIA would notice that it's about racism. I mean you do you, I don't mean to tell you you can't dislike someone's art. I just really don't get it :D
- Deprogrammer9 2y agoPollock’s art is not just random splashes but a sophisticated interaction of movement, gravity, and fluid dynamics, creating fractal-like structures. This fractal nature might contribute to why people find his work visually compelling—it resonates with patterns we see in nature.
- jfengel 2y agoWhat are your thoughts if I don't find it compelling? Is that the end of it, or is there some reason for me to keep seeking emotional resonance in it?
- bigstrat2003 2y agoI mean, it's just random splashes. I don't think there's a reason to convince yourself that there is some compelling hidden meaning to it.
- mturmon 2y agohttps://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29103-try-to-be-one-of-those-on-whom-nothing-is https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/29103-try-to-be-one-of-thos...
- jfengel 2y agoThat is a really good point. I've put a lot of effort into understanding things that didn't appeal and some of them are now very meaningful to me. I thought literature was absurd and now I direct Shakespeare plays. So... I'll think on that.
- noirbot 2y agoIt's not any more random than where you happen to be standing in relation to the clouds at sunset. There's plenty of days that doesn't have any emotional resonance to me, but some days it does. I wouldn't dwell on it, and if you happen to see a piece in person some day, maybe it strikes you differently.
- amadeuspagel 2y agoBeautiful. Minimal interface. The domain itself is the only necessary explanation.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- matthberg 2y agoIt's configurable too! Numbers set grey scale. Letters set colors (b=blue, r=red, y=yellow, etc). Mouse click sets random color. Spacebar or double-click resets canvas. I didn't discover this, comment stolen from previous discussion (thank you Cactus2018!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284711
- SeanLuke 2y agoSomehow something I typed changed the background color. But I don't know how.
- novosel 2y agoctrl+b
- alt227 2y agoCtrl+b brings up the bookmark toolbar in Firebox.
- SeanLuke 2y agoAfraid not.
- novosel 2y agoYes, I see. I cannot replicate it either. Sometimes it get me another color (green) for a background, while starting bookmarks panel. Something funny is happening; as I understand it, it is a flash thing reimplemented.
- matthberg 2y agoI figured it out--<Shift + color-letter> changes the background color! Shift+w = white background Shift+9 = dark gray background Shift+d = black background Also I found out the color letters aren't limited to "rgbyo", there's a color for nearly every letter. d = black w = white u = umber (nice brown) i = teal p = cream s = salmon l = slightly muted yellow Check the code at view-source:https://jacksonpollock.org/js/myScript.js https://jacksonpollock.org/js/myScript.js for more! "m" brings up some info about the person who made this, Miltos Manetas. Thank you Miltos!
- thesparks 2y agoCan someone with ChatGPT Pro use Operator and ask it to move the mouse to create a beautiful painting and see what happens?
- krism 2y agoAmazing!!!
- LAC-Tech 2y agoCan someone help me? I can't get to the main page, but it draws what looks like a toddlers art work when I try and use it. Firefox on Linux.
- nayeem3650 2y ago[dead]
- xeonax 2y agoThis reminded me of my Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791443
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoBased on Stamen Design's Splatter https://stamen.com/splatter-now-re-available-for-download-1584036b9315/ https://stamen.com/splatter-now-re-available-for-download-15... https://github.com/stamen/splatter https://github.com/stamen/splatter
- tomgp 2y agoI remember when the Jacksonpollock.org first came online there was a bit of drama around the fact that Miltos Manetas had taken Stamen’s original Flash file (well known within the flash community at the time but not so much outside) and re-hosted it without credit or permission. They sorted it out and Stamen were credited in the end but it opened my eyes to how much of contemporary art it’s actually marketing. (With reference here to Manetas not Pollock)
- chris_wot 2y agoHas anyone seen Blue Poles? It nearly brought down a government.
- hermitcrab 2y ago"The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) purchased Blue Poles in 1973 for US$1.3 million." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Poles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Poles There is one born every minute.
- wistlo 2y agoShowed this to my 16 year old and she said, "oh, yeah, I've got that bookmarked." "You should also try Mondrian and Me." I did, and it's as you would expect: https://mondrianandme.com/ https://mondrianandme.com/ More fun than panda dataframes, at least at this hour.
- samdung 2y agoSince we are on Pollock ... https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/ https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/
- kilroy123 2y agoHow cool to see this. This last year, I helped the artist fix this and bring this back to life. Makes me smile to see it here. :) Here is the Artist's home page, btw: https://manetas.com/timeline.com/en/ https://manetas.com/timeline.com/en/
- smrtkobylam 2y agoGreat! Is this website funded by CIA as well?
- qoez 2y ago2003? Canvas wasn't a thing until the 2010s
- jccalhoun 2y agoI went on archive.org and it looks like the 2003 version used flash.
- SJC_Hacker 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element "Canvas was initially introduced by Apple for use in their own Mac OS X WebKit component in 2004,[1] powering applications like Dashboard widgets and the Safari browser. Later, in 2005, it was adopted in version 1.8 of Gecko browsers,[2] and Opera in 2006,[3] and standardized by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) on new proposed specifications for next generation web technologies.[4] "
- fitsumbelay 2y agothe main reason why I el-you-vee love this is that it's what my first sketches in processing ( minus the obligatory "random" color generation on every mouse click ( somehow those colors where never really random ) ) plus some algo for extra splotches around curves, it looks like. a very simple starting point elevated to a super cool thing.
- metalman 2y agosomeone, once, attached different paint brushes to the branches of a tree, that could touch a canvas placed below. The completely random, but compelling results, resemble nothing so much as a pollock one of the few mad artists that I admire there work. Also have lived with paintings done in his studio by an X's relative, who was attempting the same style, but in no way achiving what pollock himself did. I do have a few random unknown artist works, that come close, and have a partial back story on two, and they were also, mad! Mad but precious, and in this time there is little physical and financial room for people and the subculters they create to thrive, and so we are impoverished. The app is cute, but it trivialises what was a huge reach into the unknown.
- ascorbic 2y agoIt's a lot of fun building these kinds of things. I made this a few years ago and got obsessed with modelling bezier curves for individual bristles and tweaking the tiny details of blend modes https://react-artboard.netlify.app/ https://react-artboard.netlify.app/
- viggity 2y agoIf splines/beziers are of any interest to you, I could not recommend these videos from Freya Holmer enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw
- BeFlatXIII 2y agoThis brings back fond memories of playing around in KidPix in elementary school.
- hermitcrab 2y agoTo think that someone actually made a lucrative career out of the analogue version of this. I suppose it was one step above hanging a blank canvas with a pretentious caption underneath.
- profunctor 2y agoHave you seen them in real life? They are much more interesting in person.
- codingdave 2y agoHe did not make a lucrative career out of his painting. He was fairly poor... just famous. And not even that until the last few years of his life.
- hermitcrab 2y agoIt says at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist) : "By 1989 Bacon was the most expensive living artist after one of his triptychs sold at Sotheby's for over US$6 million." And: "He died of a heart attack on 28 April 1992, aged 82. He bequeathed his estate (then valued at £11 million) to his heir and sole legatee John Edwards." Sounds quite lucrative to me.
- codingdave 2y agoThat would totally prove your point if this post was about Francis Bacon. It isn't.
- hermitcrab 2y agoOops! ;0)
- gizajob 2y ago“To me they look like bits of old lace” - Francis Bacon
- Repin 2y ago[dead]
- matthberg 2y agoI've commented [0] on some of the hidden features (changing foreground and background colors with <letter/number> and <shift + letter/number> respectively) but also to note is there's some nice ascii art in the raw source (though the main bit is cut out by HN filters): view-source:https://jacksonpollock.org https://jacksonpollock.org ___ ___ ___ ___ / /\ ___ / /\ ___ / /\ / /\ / /::| /__/\ / /:/ /__/\ / /::\ / /::\ / /:|:| \__\:\ / /:/ \ \:\ / /:/\:\ /__/:/\:\ / /:/|:|__ / /::\ / /:/ \__\:\ / /:/ \:\ _\_ \:\ \:\ /__/:/_|::::\ __/ /:/\/ /__/:/ / /::\ /__/:/ \__\:\ /__/\ \:\ \:\ \__\/ /~~/:/ /__/\/:/~~ \ \:\ / /:/\:\ \ \:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \:\_\/ / /:/ \ \::/ \ \:\ / /:/__\/ \ \:\ /:/ \ \:\_\:\ / /:/ \ \:\ \ \:\ /__/:/ \ \:\/:/ \ \:\/:/ /__/:/ \__\/ \ \:\ \__\/ \ \::/ \ \::/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ \__\/ 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42987887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42987887