Lecture 01-30

Generative art.

Some greatest hits.

Evolved Virtual Creatures (1994, Karl Sims)
Substrate (2003, Jared Tarbell)
Form Study #1 (2004), Vanitas (2009) – Jason Salavon
Nokia Friends (2009, Toxi + Universal Everything)
Furry & Furry’s Posse (2009, Matt Pyke)
Communion (2011, Field.io)
Partitura (2011, Quayola + Abstract Birds)
Forms (2012, Quayola + Memo Akten)
Work & tools by Nervous System
- Generative wood Puzzle: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jrosenk/6071710142/
- Growing a Hyphae Lamp process and results
Marius Watz
Type & Form case study (2008, Toxi)
MOS Architects
Written Images (2011, d_effekt)

Some starting points.

Sol Lewitt (1960s) e.g. 1 2
Georg Nees, Schotter (1965)
Golan’s simple Yellowtail

People & Resources

Generative Artists – 1st Generation (active since late 1960s)

Charles Csuri (*1922) [i]
Herbert W. Franke (*1927)
Jean-Pierre Hébert (*1939)
Manfred Mohr (*1938)
Vera Molnar (*1924)
Frieder Nake (*1938)
Georg Nees (*1926)
A. Michael Noll (*1939)
Lillian Schwartz (*1927)
Roman Verostko (*1929)
Edward Zajec (*1938)

Generative Artists – 2nd Generation (active since early ’80s)

Generative Artists – 3rd Generation (active since late 1990s)

Robert Hodgin / Flight404 [Flickr][Vimeo][Site]
Leander Herzog [Flickr][Vimeo]
Marius Watz [Flickr][Vimeo][Site]
Karsten Schmidt / Toxi [Flickr][Vimeo][Site]
Lia Something [Flickr][Vimeo][Site]
Tina Frank [Vimeo][Site]
Aaron Koblin [Vimeo][Site]
Erik Natzke [Flickr][Vimeo]
Memo Akten [Vimeo][Site]
Jared Tarbell [Flickr][Site]
Mario Klingemann / Quasimondo [Flickr][Site]
Josh Nimoy [Nice blog post]

Historic & Contemporary Resources

Ruth Leavitt’s 1975 book Artist and Computer, now online, is an excellent snapshot of computer, algorithmic, and generartive arts from ~1965-1975.
The Digital Art Museum [DAM] in Berlin also has an excellent overview of historic works.
The GeneratorX blog, maintained by Marius Watz, is a comprehensive gateway to contemporary practice in this area.
Casey Reas has created a marvellous exploration of Software Structures at Whitney Artport.
A fantastic web site of Generative Art Links by Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen.

Parametric Design

Toxi: Wheels
Quasimondo: Ornamism
Mathworld Curves, Famous Curves
(see this Processing applet)

Shape Grammars / Substitution Rules

Stiny & Gips

Procedural Modelling

Pascal Mueller‘s Procedural Modeling of Cities (PDF)

Artificial Life, Synthetic Characters

One Thousand Ksoids (2012, Myshli / Danil Krivoruchko)
Weird Faces Study (2012, Matthias Dörfelt)
A-Volve (1994(?) Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau) [1][2]
Nokia Friends (Toxi + Universal Everything)
Processing Monsters (Lukas Vojir et al.)
Singlecell.org and Doublecell.org (Various)
Creatures (Lee Byron, CMU’08)
A Confidence of Vertices (Brandon Morse)
Sniff interactive dog (Karolina Sobecka & Jim George)
Evolved Virtual Creatures (1994, Karl Sims)
Steering Behaviors (Craig Reynolds)
Birds! (Robert Hodgin / Flight404)

Examples of current practice, merging computational design with digital fabrication:

GeneratorX 2.0 Exhibition and photosets
Scripted By Purpose exhibition
Type & Form case study by Toxi, and his SIAD workshop
MOSstack by MOS Architects
Nervous System, Play + Learn by Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg
Projects by Aranda/Lasch
Celestial Workshops by Paul Catanese
News Knitter by Ebru Kurbak & Mahir M. Yavuz
Branching Morphogenesis by Sabin-Jones LabStudio
Generative form fruit platter by Lee Byron (CMU ’08)
Foldable Fractal by David Dessens

Code tools for rapid prototyping and digital fabrication:
For Processing. The following Processing libraries are available for 3D File input, output, and manipulation. All of the listings below are duplicated from the main Processing Libraries page, which also lists many additional toolsets:

PDF Export and DXF Export
These libraries are now included as part of the Processing core.
Toxiclibs (Toxi)
OBJ and STL exporters (in toxi.geom and volumeutils)
See also > the Toxiclibs showreel.
unlekkerLib (Marius Watz)
Code for STL import and export
supercad (Guillaume Labelle)
Lets you export geometry to many 3D formats such as AutoCAD, Rhino, or SketchUP.
fluid forms libs (Stephen Williams)
Exports STL, Raw, Velocity formats; loads OBJ and STL.
ObjImport (Victor Martins)
Imports .obj files and supports groups, material references, vertex-, normal-, and texture-coordinates.
OBJ Loader (Tatsuya Saito and Polymonkey)
Loads .OBJ files into Processing, includes geometry and texture data.
SurfaceLib (Andreas Köberle and Christian Riekoff)
An easy way to create different 3D surfaces. Contains a library of surfaces and a class to extend.
UnwrappingLib (Martin Fuchs)
Unwrap low polygon models for reconstruction and digital production.