For one of my classes, "Computing and the Arts", the first assignment of the year was to create a piece of "Algorithmic Art", or at least, quasi-algorithmic art, as within art, the formal definition of an algorithm is corrupted to still include some aspect of random variation between realizations of the piece.
What the piece truly is, is a rule set for people to follow and create a form of art, like a directed drawing class, where the only differences between pieces come down to what the instructor allows and individual abilities of the artists making the art.
In my scheme of rules, I wanted to be able to have a greatly varying sample of material to base the art of of, thus, I took an idea from examples of generative art in the class, where the main portion of the piece is taken randomly from photo websites like flickr.com, so that the chances of multiple renditions being based on the same image were slim (very slim). Another big aspect that I incorporated, which in my previous art experience in AP Studio Art stood as one of my favorite and most used styles, was utilizing randomly placed lines to create sub sections of the image and work each section as if it was a different piece itself, varying style, color and the such to get a conglomeration of sections adding up to one whole image, with this being a prototype visualization based on an earlier draft of my rules (by me):
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| Quick rendition based on early designs of my quasi-algorithm |
The medium of digital art proved to be the easiest to use in order to incorporate random aspect to the rule set which would, while in some cases rely on the artists decisions in small aspects, would keep the rules more uniform and allow for more possibilities in creating entropy and yet reigning in the various possibilities that could take affect with art done in other mediums such as ink or graphite, which were considerations, but took into account too heavily in my opinion, personal skill with said mediums, as well as paper, so a digital canvas which could be adjusted accordingly was the best option.
The biggest objective in my rule set was to accomplish this style of splitting the image, and using both drawing by the artist and the original image (not present in the example above). I also wished to vary the art by allowing the artist to place the lines where they wished, though I set the amount and rules to where they had to be placed and how much they needed to intersect to make enough sections to work with. However, the amount of sections could vary significantly based on the artists placement and decisions, though limited significantly. From there, the piece moves in the direction of treating different sections differently based on numbering in a reading method (right to left, top to bottom), which then allows later rules to affect each cell and applies either fills or blackouts to break the image up, between the artists sketching and the original image.
Overall, the entropy within the rule set comes from the random image, and the choices made by the artist in where the lines cutting up the image go, leading to very similar renditions, yet all formatted slightly different, giving it a decent level of entropy. While nothing comparable to the Dice game used by Mozart in randomness, it is similar to how the dice game will always make a functioning musical piece, as the art will always be an image partially drawn, and partially covered in a geometric fashion.
And that is what I wanted to make, as it is a style that I personally have used to relative success and love. I had a great deal of fun with the project, and being creative, though it was tough at times figuring out what in the world I should do. This is what ended up happening. I suppose you still stick to what you are comfortable with in the end.
~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~
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