Generative Systems for Art and Design

©2020 Dan Buzzo www.buzzo.com

Examples built in C++ using openFrameworks (openframeworks.cc)

• Generative Systems for Art and Design
• 6 main workshop sessions
  • 1 Visual expression: generative drawing, weaving and pattern making
  • 2 Dice music - mozart and beyond
  • 3 Text and narrative
  • 4 Procedural generation of environments
  • 5 Generative systems in industrial design and architecture.
  • 6 The Thing that Makes the Thing is More Interesting than the Thing
  • Code each week & video
• Assignment
• Tool and system links
• Reading lists
  • Core texts
  • Recommended reading
  • extended reading

6 main workshop sessions

1 Visual expression: generative drawing, weaving and pattern making

• Techniques: pattern, walkers, L systems & fractals, conway game of life
• Ideas: generative drawing, editing and pattern making. Making state and extending temporal 'context'
• Demo: random walker, active drawing, Markov Chains, Cellular Automata in 1 & 2D, agents, termites and drunken ants
• Examples: Annie Albers, Vera Molnar, Aaron, Jared Tarbell, Zach Lieberman

2 Dice music - mozart and beyond

• Techniques: stochastics, randomness and perlin noise, higher level stochastics, markov chains, probability and randomness -
• Ideas: lexicons, translations and pattern matching.
• Demo: all techniques & stubs, loops, phasing
  • Random music in the style of 'music for airports'
  • Markov Chain Drum Machine
  • drunken Ant synthesizer
• Examples: Mozart, Eno, KOAN,

3 Text and narrative

• Techniques: text sorting, automatic and generative poetry, interactive story structure
• Ideas: Grammar and variation
• Demo: Markov chain text, lexical searches, generating nGrams, automatic writing from grammar structure, POS (part of speech) and lexicons
• Examples: TSR chooose your own adventure, exquisite corpse

4 Procedural generation of environments

• Techniques: parameterization and lSystems for algorithmic plant growth
• Ideas: parameters and patterns
• Demo: procedural chairs, procedural forest,
• Examples: parameterised architecture, procedural level generation

5 Generative systems in industrial design and architecture.

• Techniques:
• Ideas:
• Demo:
• Examples: Autodesk, Engineering etc

6 The Thing that Makes the Thing is More Interesting than the Thing

• Techniques: where the art lies in the art?
• Ideas: where the interest lies in the thing?
• Demo:
• Examples: casey reas, vera molnar, zach lieberman

Code each week & video

C++ OpenFrameworks code in git repo, intro video

then workshop and discussion lead by participants - 3 teams - one presentation each.

• presentation of teams in specific artist or process. 5 mins

Assignment

Produce a system & process or make artefact with process to demo // + poster

Collated together as anthology of design and code CW1 report document written with text & image pdf short description extended abstracts format

CC1 Present video documentation and demonstration

Tool and system links

• openframeworks.cc
• processing.org
• unity3D.com
• maxMSP // Jitter

Reading lists

Core texts

• Nature of code : Shiffman, D
• Processing. Casey Reas
• Generative Design
• Form and code
• https://www.artnome.com/news/2018/8/8/why-love-generative-art

Recommended reading

• Mozart Dice music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zdg6Ec4mVw

• Musikalisches Würfelspiel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK2MCXpDWB4

• https://medium.freecodecamp.org/an-introduction-to-generative-art-what-it-is-and-how-you-make-it-b0b363b50a70

• https://labs.ideo.com/2014/06/04/painting-with-code/

• Brian Eno: Music systems; examples in javasccript: https://teropa.info/blog/2016/07/28/javascript-systems-music.html

• Generative music: https://medium.com/@metalex9/introduction-to-generative-music-91e00e4dba11

• Annie Albers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1_fCjuu8sM

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaBc8R22JKU

• Vera Molnar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UUB2kplKOU

• Harold Cohen: History of Aaron painting system : https://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/cohen.html

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecP9BLg9D88

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPczQgCuOOc

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwHQx9BrHQc

• John Whitney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbV7loKp69s

• l systems: Prusinkiewicz, Lindenmayer - 1990 - The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants

• markov chains : http://setosa.io/ev/markov-chains/

• http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/substrate/index.php

extended reading

• https://www.kadenze.com/courses/advanced-generative-art-and-computational-creativity/info
• https://www.oreilly.com/learning/generative-adversarial-networks-for-beginners
• http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/generative-art-links/
• Carl Lostrito.'Computational Drawing' 2019, Pub. Applied Research and Design

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