Category: Spring 2019

Through explaining the origin of computer artwork, Casey Reas improved my understanding of the essence of computer art. I would describe Casey Reas artwork as a  beautiful mess. His artwork is able to evoke emotions combining shapes and color with random patterns and although the elements from a perspective behave in disorder, once put together all the elements together create an aesthetic piece of art.

My takeaway of Casey Reas talk is the importance of using noise and random. One of my biggest challengings in computer art is to unlearn that symmetry is the way to achieve beauty and aesthetic. What I have learned with this video and with the assignments in class, is that there are no concrete ways to achieve beauty, definitely, there is beauty in the order but you can find also find beauty in chaos and randomness like Casey Reas.

Casey Reas starts off by showing some of his own work, all of which is very visually striking. It looks somewhat alive like it was taken from something organic and he points out that that was he wanted to do. He started off by building on what others have established and then from that, he decided to start anew and write his own code for new randomness. Some of the shapes and patterns he produces look very abstract, yet somehow still manage to not look very random. These are all done digitally but it made me wonder what if we had a device to paint these patterns and shapes with paint and make it more physical, would it produce even more organic looking final pieces at the end?

What I liked, in particular, was how deeply incorporated the organic is in his work. It all looks alive and that is in part, I guess attributed to the “homeostatic” randomness.

I think this talk will help a lot with this week’s assignments because Reas demonstrates some of the concepts he talks about using processing – the ide we are using in class.

Casey Reas

Reas’ talk deals with the concepts of ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ in the artistic world – both these elements provide an exhaustive range of possibilities that can exist. Many digital artists within the last half millennia and specifically the last decade have really expanded this field of idiosyncratic designs and abstraction. I really liked Reas’ installation of turning something artificial into an organic art form at 3:2o as this art form really appeals to me as I’m someone who always seeks to find patterns in nature. I also found the movement and emergent growth portrayed by his later work (as portrayed at 29:00) to also be very appealing.

I really liked his concept about ‘using a rational machine to do something random’ and taking the time to understand this form of digital art as a ‘sum of the whole’ (looking at the last decade) as it made me gain more respect for abstract art as a whole, which I previously found arbitrary and futile.

What I found most fascinating about Casey Reas’ talk on his the theories of organic randomness and in digital artwork, is the way that he distilled the lines of code he writes into simple and direct paragraphs that define what Is going on. He then is able to combine those paragraphs, just like someone would while building interlaced code, and create a much more complex layering of Ideas and functions into a single image.

There is also a section where he discusses his desire to create a consistent moving texture that doesn’t decay after being played over the course of several days. This is interesting in context of one of Reas’ goals, to artificially create images that imitate organic life.

Another thing I was intrigued by was the program Reas used to demonstrate how symmetry can make something random into something recognizable, but organic.

I think it is interesting how he conceptualizes how the randomness of computer generated artwork has developed over time, and how he and others use it. He talks about it like any art critic would a piece of fine renaissance artwork, because this is the renaissance he sees. The digital age has opened up new fields and possibilities for the artwork we design.

 

The discussion on what is art and what is not is a very slippery slope- and I was very happy that the presentation did not take the course of trying to prove that computer art is legitimate, but already spoke of it as such without an inch of doubt. Instead, he introduced a couple of mesmerizing and inspiring ideas that made me question the way I look at creating art, ideas behind it but also the way I design things.

One of such things was the idea of imprecision within symmetry. It made me think that I use these kind tricks without even realizing it- just adding one slight element off-grid, using a color outside the palette or a different shape. Because making something stand out is difficult to achieve by 100% symmetry. What you achieve with perfect symmetry is an expected satisfaction, but you miss out on an element of surprise that  catches attention. And in the case that Reas discusses with the receptors that are wired in three different ways but each of them is a little imprecise (which causes them to move similarly but slightly different)- it not only makes it more interesting but unveils a completely new way of behavior and patterns.

It reminded me of what we were talking about in class- and that is the difference between random and noise and how noise adds the “off-grid” element by still maintaining a sense of symmetry and order.

But who makes the decision about the amount of randomness that we include/should we include?  And, as discussed on the example of dots within a perfect grid that move by an increasing number of pixels- where is the line between what is clearly in order/symmetrical with a slight deviation and what is completely chaotic with no sense of order, symmetry or patter whatsoever? Can it be generalized or is it based on how individual brains are wired?

Thanks, Reas, now I have even more questions.

Eyeo2012 – Casey Reas

The 40 minutes flew by as Casey Reas began by detailing the origin and development of his very intricate code-generated graphics in relation to Chance Operation. The fact that Reas began by generating simple geometric randomized patterns, gave way to his use of noise and random number systems in order to produce more sophisticated designs, with an organic flow to the shapes and patterns. During his talk, Reas articulates the importance of Michael Noll as a pioneer in the field of creative digital computation, and how Noll emphasizes the significance of the “full exploitation of those unique talents [of computers] for controlled randomness and detailed algorithms [which] can result entirely in an entirely new medium”, and this new medium that Noll describes is a “creative artistic medium”, that has enabled the likes of Reas to to manifest beautiful artworks.

It was also fascinating how Reas points out that randomized number systems  have proved to be essential in the exploration of computer-generated graphics, and allowed people more freedom in creating fascinating patterns that emphasize the intrinsic relation between order and chaos. It really raises the question around the limitations of noise and random numbers in the world of code, design and computer graphics.

I thought that watching this presentation was extremely interesting. Especially because I previously had a hard time wrapping my head around the novelty of using computers to generate art. I always thought: “if I can paint what I can do in Processing, why do I need to produce this art using computers?” But this cemented in my mind how useful creating patterns and art in both predictable and unpredictable ways is, and how computers are the perfect tool to do this. The examples Reas presented allowed me to understand just how flexible computer art is.

How can nature be effectively simulated using computer art? This is something that I wondered throughout the video, and Reas provided effective insight into how this can be done. Not only that, but his discussion of simulating nature and patterns extended to not just art but to the broader use of computing power to create patterns with various applications.

This video was interesting for me to watch because it talked more about the artistic side of code. I’ve never really been a fan of machine made art and “randomness” because I believe that art is more than just about the art, it’s also about the artist, the humanity, creativity, emotion, and ideas behind the piece. If some machine makes random lines or dots that form an image, it might look interesting, but there is nothing to connect to, no intention to interpret. However randomness can be useful when an entire piece is not just about the randomness itself, but the randomness is used to achieve something by the artist, such as the dots (27:12) moving randomly in a specific area determined by the artist. Reas’ ideas about order vs. chaos were interesting to listen to. I found it very thought provoking when he showed how the random images generated did not seem to create any specific image but when duplicated and mirrored, those same random shapes started to “trigger our imagination” and sort of create a familiar image, due to the symmetry. I also really liked the pieces he created dependent on the lines connected between the mid points of the overlapping circles (29:05-29:45). By the end of the video I was very impressed by the things that could be done, in terms of art, using code.

Casey Reas’ talk about Chance Operation really brought into light the possibilities chaos and order can create. As I was looking through the art pieces he created, I had a hard time thinking about how he coded such a design. They were messy, but in an orderly way, and it really made me focus on the piece. One of the concepts he mentioned was the use of “jittering” to create an organic movement and that was very intriguing because a small movement of particles created so many different pieces that looked nothing alike. For me, it’s exactly this randomness that makes it hard for me to think of the code he used to make the piece.

When Reas’ started talking some of the art pieces that actually represented the artist’s current time, I was surprised because I never knew there was a connect between the art and current history (e.g. World War I art pieces). I’ve never really understood art museums and there are many times where I’m in museums thinking “how did they get famous from this piece? I could make that, too.” However, since watching this video, I’ve realized that it’s what the art represents / the meaning behind the art that’s made it less simple than it seems.

After watching this, I’m more excited about experimenting with randomness and getting more comfortable with understanding how it works. I want to get to a point where I can understand how some of the small changes in noise() or random() can change up my piece (e.g. frequency, sin(), cos(), rotate()).