Context Free Art

http://www.contextfreeart.org/

by luu • 11 years ago

131 51 11 years ago

contextfreeart.org

themodelplumber• 11 years ago

Is there a big table somewhere that compares all these? Processing, P5, Nodebox versions, this one, etc.

ics3• 11 years ago

What exactly would you want to see compared? The same or similar examples for code comparison? "Features" or libraries?

zackmorris• 11 years ago

Is there are human language plugin for this (or something similar)?

j2kun5• 11 years ago

I never know how to feel about mathematically/programmatically generated art. Despite having done a bit myself, I never think it actually looks good or artistic.

ThomPete• 11 years ago

I always think about the generation part as a a brush rather than the composition itself.

Once you know how to use it you can start to create meaningful compositions.

Look at a lot of the stuff Ben Fry and Casey Reas used to do with https://processing.org/

Ono-Sendai3• 11 years ago

Check out our product here: http://chaoticafractals.com/

There are a lot of very aesthetic works: http://chaoticafractals.com/gallery

chubot• 11 years ago

A lot of these have very striking color schemes, e.g.:

http://chaoticafractals.com/art/FarDareisMai

Are these colors mathematically generated, or by a the artist?

j2kun5• 11 years ago

It's not clear to me where on the scale between photoshop and fully automated this is. Maybe you could elaborate? What is your workflow like?

kaoD• 11 years ago

Then you probably didn't look in the right place :)

Check http://www.pouet.net for some great generative art. Here are some <4kB demos:

- http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938

- http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=55758

- http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=53509 [NSFW]

- http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56866

And many more.

j2kun5• 11 years ago

I honestly don't like anything I've seen on this site...

patcon2• 11 years ago

Oddly, going to "random" on that site showed works more impressive that the default gallery view and stuff on the front page...

Starry Pines: http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/view.php?id=2577

Young Ferns: http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/view.php?id=2573

In the Morning: http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/view.php?id=2572

It's interesting to read the comments see how they inspired one another :)

endergen• 11 years ago

Aza Raskin made an in browser version of this a few years back: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/contextfreejs-algorithm-ink-...

phirschybar• 11 years ago

This guy: http://www.joshuadavis.com/ is the master of computer generated art.

rhodri• 11 years ago

there's some beautiful work here, plus code http://www.complexification.net/gallery/

xigency• 11 years ago

Very cool. Reminds me of IFS fractals and a book I read, "Fractals Everywhere," which discussed them.

the_duck2• 11 years ago

To me, computer generated art always feels less remarkable than traditional art. If you present me with two paintings that are identical, pixel for pixel, and tell me that one is human authored and the other computer authored, I'd be less interested in the computer authored one. I'd spend less time thinking about it.

I always found this fact fascinating. Why would I attribute different levels of worth to two artifacts that were totally identical, save for their method of construction?

I didn't have a good answer to this until I read a book by aesthetician Dennis Dutton (The Art Instinct). Dutton presents a 12 factor model of art, and claims that artifacts exhibiting all 12 criteria tend to be unambiguously judged as "valid art", while artifacts that miss some but exhibit most are considered "edge cases", things that reasonable people can dispute the artistic validity of.

One of Dutton's 12 criteria is "expressive individuality". Most art objects are the products of a single person's imagination. Computer generated art tends to lack this trait, and this, I think, is why it feels less valid than human-made art.

Here's an outline of the 12-factor model: http://www.aristos.org/aris-10/dutton.htm

j2kun5• 11 years ago

I think this is particularly true of "fractal art," because every piece of fractal art looks like, well, a fractal. After seeing five or six high-quality rendered fractal images, they all start to look the same.

I am very much in support of software tools, especially because of how they limit you (like working with a limited palette), but you need to actually express yourself in how you use the tools. Somehow tweaking parameters and adding premade filters doesn't really do it for me.

gareth_at_work• 11 years ago

I agree about fractals looking very similar after a while. I have seen some truly artistic fractal images created by people who also create art using non-digital tools. My hobby is "generative" digital art, and I prefer to write 99% of the code myself in order to feel that the result is truly my creation.

qdot763674• 11 years ago

"Computer generated art tends to lack expressive individuality"

That's a pretty massive blanket statement to apply to a whole field of art.

"I think, is why it feels less valid than human-made art."

You realize there's still a human making the art, right? It's not like a computer rendered piece is of the computer's will. A painting isn't of the paint's will.

Some people paint, some people sculpt, some people make electrons do a whole bunch of math really fast. You can't always let means overrule intention.

the_duck2• 11 years ago

I'm talking about cases where human involvement is minimal. If all I need to do to make a painting is press the "run" button, there's not much intention there. I haven't expressed anything.

You could certainly make the case for "expressive individuality" in the program making the art, especially if it was written by just one person. But computer programs, IMHO, fail the "valid art" test for other reasons. Of Dutton's twelve criteria they miss at least two: representation (6) and emotional saturation (9).

fit2rule• 11 years ago

That's a pretty massive blanket statement to apply to a whole field of art.

It depends who you ask. Those who were raised on oil-and-blood based artworks, or those for whom Pixar represents the highest realms to which an Artist may aspire.

Never forget, your opinion is going to be invalid once the youth graduate/take over. Your time is limited by those who grant you relevance in the world: the kids.

ics3• 11 years ago

Most art objects are the products of a single person's imagination.

This is an unfortunate cliché that is not nearly as widely accepted as one might think. It may be true that computers have a much clearer path to hand-holding in order to produce a finished product, but the tools, materials, and education one gets in the real world make it exceedingly difficult to find art that can be seen as the product of just one person's imagination, and even more rare that it is art people then appreciate.

I admit that the whole topic is very difficult, but there are platitudes floating around which do no favors to our understanding of it. Disclaimer: I draw for a living and program (mostly) for fun.

qdot763674• 11 years ago

Also, I am so very, very tempted to make a shirt that just says "Valid Art" on the front.

patcon2• 11 years ago

In my gut, I sympathize with what you're saying. When I think about it though, I know digital or generative art need not be any less than an artistic work than a painting.

It's unfortunate for many digital artists that "in the gut" is where wider artistic appreciation lies. But I imagine film also took awhile for the societal gut-feels to embrace. I hope that happens

cheatsheet• 11 years ago

Computer generated art tends to lack this trait, and this, I think, is why it feels less valid than human-made art.

I could not disagree with you more.

Most of traditional contemporary art for the past 100 years have been art pieces and products that are meta-critiques and meta-dialogues of the current understanding of Art, conversations between artists... These things attempt to explore what Art truly is. Some aspects of post modernism have taken it to the point where everything is absolutely meaningless, others as a caricature or commentary on post capitalist society.

Yves Klein painted things blue and this is art. Rothko painted squares, except more notable (to me, at least) were the namings of his paintings, most called "no. #" and such. Dali put drawers and pom poms on the breasts of classical Grecian figures, and let us not forget about Dada - whose chief goal was to destroy Art, only to become included under the category of artistic movements.

Aesthetics has been discussed for centuries, and at core, is a philosophical question. It shares many characteristics similar to computer code and classical logic, once you've abstracted layer on top of meta layer, until you really are scratching your head, wondering what the symbols you've generated actually mean.

As a painter for 20 years, and as software developer / computer scientist for 15, I rarely see anything besides an image of a thing when I walk into a museum. In computer code and mathematics, I see much, much more, and whatever it is that code communicates to me is infinite and entangled completely in my being and my nature.

tannk11001• 11 years ago

Programmatically generated art is still an immature medium, and rudimentary experiments in the medium still dominate what you see. They don't need to be great art for them to stimulate a little curiousity and interest among people are are following the medium more closely than you are, and that's what you see in galleries like those presented here.

You don't find them remarkable because they're the medium's equivalent of photography's early Daguerreotypes. Those early photos lack many truly artistic qualities. The substrates couldn't capture tonality, dynamic range or action very well. The artists were still surveying the very basic possibilities of photography. It wasn't until decades later that we start seeing great art coming from photography.

The same applies here. Most generative pieces using Context Free or Processing are unremarkable as 'art' because they're just basic surveys. They're still just using tempura paint and seeing what they can do with it.

But keep your mind open -- give it another 30 years, as the medium matures, and you're sure to be embarassed by how trivially you pass it off here. Year after year, more expressiveness will come through in more sophisticated generators made with more and more sophisticated tools.

trop• 11 years ago

Absolutely! I'm a big fan of VectorPark interactive work http://www.vectorpark.com/. It's algorithmically created, yes, but also cleverly drawn within the algorithms. And more so, there's a sense of wonder and surprise and beauty to this work. It takes a really particular sort of artist/coder to pull this sort of thing off -- technical virtuosity while retaining an imagination. All too often the technical mastery required reduces subsumes the emotional range of the work...

amelius• 11 years ago

Interesting, but it feels still a bit subjective.

Also, I'm interested in what you would say about the difference between art created by a single person (say Leonardo da Vinci, or any great painter) or art created by a whole army of people (say Pixar, or any of the movie/animation studios).

zmeden• 11 years ago

For me, a good way to think about it is to first inquire what is art, what is work of art, and what is the art product. The book "Art as Experience" helped me immensely.

I see art as experience that stands out from a daily experience because of its intensity and refinement. And work of art as the process of creation of the art product.

Usually, context around the art product is an important part of experience. So if we remove the object out of its context (city, creation, people, usage of it if it is a building for example..) and transport it globally to some museum the art is diminished. Sure we can write stuff next to the art product but it is not the same. What you can directly experience is just an observation of the craftsmanship, other things you have to imagine.

So if you were around the folks who are creating algorithms for computer generated art you would experience the end product much more intensely since you would directly experience the process of refinement, context, motivations and so on.

catshirt• 11 years ago

great comment. I think, for this case, "expressive individuality" is synonymous with intent. you can't ponder a program's intent.

that said, there is another discussion to be had about how much intent actually matters (or doesn't) in art. to that end, a computer program's art should be just as provoking as if it were created by a human.

there is how the artist intends to move you, and there is how you are actually moved. they don't have to depend on each other.

meric• 11 years ago

As of 2015, someone texting you specifically "how've you been today? :)" is different to someone text spamming the same to a thousand people, and is also different to computer texting the same. There is intimacy with the former, but not the latter two. As art has traditionally been a form of communication between human beings, the same principle applies.

bildung• 11 years ago

I always found this fact fascinating. Why would I attribute different levels of worth to two artifacts that were totally identical, save for their method of construction?

You might be interested in Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in which he muses about more or less the same question: What is the difference between the original and an identical copy, made possible due to the technical advantages of our times?

Wikipedia has a summary and a link to the complete text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_M...

opaqe• 11 years ago

I used this to teach myself to code for the first time. It felt very natural just exploring and getting immediate visual feedback with the images I generated. I still use it to generate my desktop background images.

GhotiFish2• 11 years ago

I love these styles of backgrounds, and would be very interested if you have a gallery. I personally use blender to generate backgrounds in this style[1]. I keep putting off exploring this tool because I have difficulty parsing the syntax.

1. http://imgur.com/a/AaHGw

Everlag• 11 years ago

Those blender backgrounds are just the style I enjoy. Could you point me to a tutorial or similar on generating them?

juliendorra• 11 years ago

Context Free Art is really nice to play with because of its integrated editor-viewer and the immediacy, and we even used it a little during our first Coding Goûter sessions with kids. The main obstacle we found when trying to use it with beginners (kids and adults) is the lack of code example that are easy to tweak and build upon (ie. cool but simple, not too optimized, and with holes to fill). Most examples are prowess, very clever code. It makes for great demos but it's less useful as a learning code for beginners.

fragglesmock• 11 years ago

http://electricsheep.org

nness• 11 years ago

Hehehe, my old gallery from years back is still available on the site: http://www.contextfreeart.org/gallery/search.php?by=lazymoon

I was lucky enough to also have my work included in their first book. Still have a copy on my shelf.

Context Free Art

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