Assignment 3 : Mondrian
Generative art is hard to visualize at first, but once one gets the hang of it, numbers and coordinates can be just as expressive (and then some) as traditional mediums of art. Using the compiler, that magical ethereal entity which makes all coding possible, I can turn these instructions:
void setup(){
size(800,800);
background(0);
noStroke();
fill(255,0,0);
rect(0,0,340,300);
fill(255);
rect(360,0,500,300);
rect(0,320,340,190);
rect(360,320,500,190);
rect(90,530,250,500);
rect(630,530,500,500);
rect(360,780,250,230);
fill(0,0,255);
rect(360,530,250,230);
fill(255,255,0);
rect(0,530,75,500);
}
void draw(){
}
into this colorful image:
Face Drawing
It’s Matt
Mondrian
Nathalie- Looking Outwards
So Musicovery by Frederic Vavrille is pretty much amazing.
(musicovery.com)
Essentially it’s Pandora.com, but with a really cool visual aspect to it. It generates radio for you based on music genres and songs/artists that you’ve favorited, and then it uses your favorite songs to generate a visual map of your musical interests.
I think from a synesthetic viewpoint this is really fascinating, because ways of visualizing music with relationships based on genre and sound and color has always interested me. It’s more visually interesting than any music visualizing system I’ve seen yet, also.
Another piece I found interesting is called StarryNight, by Alex Galloway, Mark Tribe, Martin Wattenberg.
http://archive.rhizome.org/starrynight/
Essentially what it does is that it turns every text and article on Rhizome.com into a star on the map, and every time one of those texts is read on the site, its corresponding star gets a little brighter. Over time, this uses people’s interaction with the site to build a star map out of all the articles on the site, and it makes it easy to tell which ones are most-read. When a user of the star map hovers over any particular star, they can view keywords relating to the article that star represents, and by choosing one it will generate a constellation connecting all the other stars that share that keyword. It’s a really endearing way of visualizing a lot of information at once.
Finally, we have the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names.
http://blog.kobayashi.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/poster_rappers_1300.jpg
Mostly I find this interesting because it’s a very frivolous subject matter, but also because I like these sorts of bubble graphs with all the lines sprouting off the bubbles and I think they’re a really fun way of looking at information. The use of color to me is what makes this an artistic piece as opposed to just a really nice way of viewing information, even if the subject matter is a little silly.
Assignment 03 – Blink
For this assignment, Clair Chin and I decided to make a Space Weather Alert system to notify individuals when solar flares/other space weather events occur. We envisioned the blink(1) to be placed in a symbolic, sun-shaped lantern located in a household.
For our system to work, we created a twitter account (@SolarScanner) that would trigger the blink event. We created a list of solar weather twitters, then used the web service “RoundTeam” to automatically retweet any posts from this list. When a space weather alert is issued, or an M or X class solar flare is reported, the twitter we created (@SolarScanner) will trigger the blink device, and the lantern will illuminate.
A solar flare is a prime example of an unseen force that directly effects the earth. This space weather alert system creates a visual notification of these unseen forces. To expand on this project, I would create different colors/frequencies depending on the severity of the solar flare. It might also be interesting to expand the idea to other natural phenomena, such as earthquakes or meteorites.
Mondrian
Mondrian Drawing- IKA
Looking Outwards 3
Jean Pierre Herbert
Sand Apparatus
Sand Apparatus is a kinetic device (much like a plotter) used for making artwork which involves sand on a constructed, wood platform with a magnet underneath, and a metal ball. This piece maintains the zen of a Japanese garden by introducing this ball in a non-obtrusive manner, completely void of anything mechanical to the viewer. The process is magical, and the lightness and form of sand provides the “blotter drawing” with a more spacial approach.
–
Roman Verostko
Diamond Lake Apocalypse
Diamond Lake Apocalypse is presented as an open book, embodying the idea of a precious object filled with algorithmic, blotted drawings. The artist means for the book to take on the character of an illuminated manuscript, with each page carefully constructed by the artist as though he were a monk. The patterns and colours are mesmerizing, and the layout of the pages speaks in more in an alien language of words and symbols rather than just an image.
–
Giuseppe Randazzo
Stone Fields is a computational project, coded in a C++ console application that outputs a OBJ 3d file, where virtual stones are created from several fractal subdivision categories. These imagined landscapes come across as actual stones at first glance, and there becomes this play between nature and the sterility of the virtual. It is like a mental, non-physical ordering and manipulating of the gravel below a park bench, something done very much so unintentionally and out of involuntary need.