Generative art(or creative coding) is a fascinating topic in the world of programming, where coding is used as a medium to create aesthetically pleasing fixtures. Having already explored the topic somewhat in a previous post, this particular post furthers that exploration.
The previous discussion on generative art featured on the blog centered around what creative coding is from a conceptual perspective. This time around, we briefly discuss one of the works of a prominent individual in the field: Refik Anadol.
Refik Anadol is a media artist and director born in Istanbul, Turkey. He conducts work in the fields of live audio/visual performance with an immersive installation approach and also a parametric data sculpture approach. As a media artist and dynamic spatial thinker, Refik Anadol is intrigued by ways in which the transformation of the subject of contemporary culture requires rethinking of a new aesthetic, dynamic perception of space.
He has produced a variety of interesting artworks that all seem to belong to a time at least three decades in the future, proof of his conceptual capabilities applied to some of the best technology today. Regarding machine hallucinations, one of his most recent and visually pleasing artworks, designboom says that "each moment represents a wide-ranging selection of architectural styles and movements and reveals the hidden connections between these moments in history. the work explores the space within the mind of a machine--limitless in its dimension and in the information it holds".
From the above it should be pretty clear that Refik Anadol is pretty goody at what he does. Machine Hallucination is presented below for your enjoyment.
As an immersive installation, Machine Hallucination presents photos of New York City in lucid form. At times its pretty hard to tell what the installation is displaying. Computers aren't really prized for their ability to be abstract; that's what homo sapiens are for! In the right hands however, they do a pretty good job at it.
Inspired by this installation and some others like it, I then tried to create something that had a really nice aesthetic to it. Being aware that I would fail dismally if I tried this thing from scratch, I searched through GitHub with the intention of repurposing an existing repository, and after some experimentation, this is what I came up with.
The scene demonstrated above shows why generative art is worth checking out: because its really cool! One thing that would improve this scene would be some randomness or stochasticity if you prefer, but that's a conversation for later. Anyway, as I further traverse this particular digital landscape, I appreciate the fact that it really seems like it could go on forever.
In the above paragraph, I do not mean to say that this landscape exists without challenges. Firstly, the scene demonstrated above was made in Unity, which was built primarily to service the needs of the game development community. As such, it can be inferred that it is not the best platform to create generative art on. A more suitable platform would be something like Cinder or Processing, which both have healthy generative art communities thriving around them. Further progress from a creators standpoint requires one to learn either of those platforms, or anything else that would serve a similar purpose. With that in mind, we'll see what the future has in store for creative coding on this blog. Complement this article with the following video.
References
NoiseBall3, github.com
refik anadol induces a 'machine hallucination' at ARTECHOUSE in new york's chelsea market, designboom.com
A Creative Coding Project with Unity, creativeafricanprojects.com
Machine Hallucination, refikanadol.com
About, reikanadol.com
Strata Series - Quayola, youtube.com
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