Author: Darko Skulikj

This talk from Casey Reas at the Eyeo Festival really changed the way I look at randomness, order and chaos in art. But how?

Structure:

Casey has structured his talk in a way that made me connect with what he was saying, kind of like a short story about art based on this algorithms and randomness.

Starting of from nature, he demonstrates the art in nature and its tendency to be chaotic as well as our purpose as humans: to create order. This dates back to the first century A.D. so we can see that humans have been very conscious about this idea of maintaining some kind of harmony in art as well as adding a random element.

A big turn of events, and two pieces which really gathered my interest in the subject are this 1916 piece by Jean Arp:

This piece was considered extremely radical back in the day since it broke the rules of bringing order into art, where he just put down random pieces of paper and created this image. Thinking differently really changed the way art was looked at. Another interesting art piece is “Three standard stoppages” by Marcel Duchamp:

Duchamp really explored the idea of getting out of reality and not using the metric system. This two pieces describe what I really feel about art, or life at all: Why are we constraining ourselves between units of measurement and concepts of order when we can unleash our wildest dreams and create something that has never been created before? Great things always came when people thought out of the box 🙂

Furthermore with digitalization and computers, we can see digitalized art taking shape as well as some interesting works that perfectly describe the part of chance and randomness in art.

Personal takeaways and projects I love:

My favorite piece that was shown in this talk from Casey is Tissue prints which was made by him. It really changed the way I think about algorithmic art and the complexity of it, as well as encouraged me too look at projects on a deeper level. More on the project can be seen on the link below:

https://reas.com/tissue_p/

Another thing to look at which is similar to this is my recent group project for the Understanding IM Class. It combines algorithm, chance, randomness and adds a personal element.  Feel free to explore on the link below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/137TySRw-u-CEIeXmAb7DMut26ogBrSnD-C2KJfH1zT8/edit?usp=sharing

 

For this portrait assignment, I decided to include the thing that I love the most, Basketball. My idea was to draw something that represents who I am as well as to add some cool animations which would further enhance the portrait.

It all started of as a simple sketch on a piece of paper where I drew up a rough portrait of me. Then I decided that I wanted to add some personal element to it, so I drew a basketball which I wanted to spin around my hand. This is where I faced my first challenge trying to transfer my idea onto the canvas. Even though it was the hardest thing to do this project, the rotation of the basketball was the most rewarding thing and for that reason I will include it as the piece of code I am most proud of. It can be seen below 🙂

...
  push();
  translate(90, 150);
  rotate(angle);
  drawBasketball();
  angle += 0.04;
  pop();
}

function drawBasketball() {
  fill(255, 165, 0);
  ellipse(0, 0, 100, 100);

  stroke(255);
  strokeWeight(3);
  for (let i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
    let angle = (TWO_PI / 8) * i;
    let x1 = cos(angle) * 45;
    let y1 = sin(angle) * 45;
    let x2 = cos(angle) * 55;
    let y2 = sin(angle) * 55;
    line(x1, y1, x2, y2);
  }
}

After solving the basketball “situation” the process was pretty straightforward and included me just carrying on with the drawing of the face and the facial features, hands and I added a jersey which represents the real jersey I use to play in basketball matches (I wear the number 17).

Before finishing up, I added a little bit of an “NYU Element” where I painted the canvas with the original NYU violet color and added a fun text animation representing the name of our Basketball team.

Overall I felt the process of creating my first project in p5.js was very rewarding and I learnt a lot of things along the way. There is certainly a long way to go and I am pretty excited of what the future holds.

My final portrait can be seen below 🙂