I like Manolo Naon's art, and I am quite fond of creative coding, but something that strikes me when seeing this article comparing his works to Kandinsky, Ernst et. al is that his works are always harmonious, a single idea in action, whereas all these classic artists have conflicts and discord in their works.<p>They deliberately avoided doing things that were simply decorative or pleasant. (Probably they were avoiding accusations of just making couch and wallpaper patterns)<p>There is more to experience then just one decorative process at work.<p>You can <i>feel</i> the artist's presence and discord in the images. Look at the Max Ernst works and ask yourself why he left it imperfect, fading away like dreams or unconscious processes.<p>Look at the Kandinskys. There is far more information (different design processes juxtaposed), and even after looking at it for a while you still have to wonder how it is balanced and yet there's barely any repetition.<p>Manolo is always explicit and readable. There is a lack of mystery. Once you've examined the image then you like it, but nothing stirs in the depths.<p>But he's young, I like the direction, and he will definitely keep developing.
It seems that recently there's been interest in procedurally-generated imagery among artists, but almost all completely unaware that the demoscene has been doing the same (and much advanced its techniques) for many years:<p><a href="http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm" rel="nofollow">http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarching...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene</a>
If you want to understand art since Cezanne, and especially after 1945, you need to understand the modernist idea of the meta-narrative. It works like this -- prior to the loosening up of gesture in painting, the narrative was whatever was depicted. Maybe it was Washington Crossing the Delaware, or Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Pictures told stories directly. Beginning with impressionist painting, and following through to non-objective modernist paint, pictures told a second story -- a meta-narrative. This is the narrative of the events that created the painting. It answers the question -- what is the story of this artwork's creation? This leaves the viewer to deal with things like struggle, imperfection, and arbitrary residue (there are cigarette butts within some Jackson Pollocks). Did you ever visit MoMa and see Barnett Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimimis?<p><a href="https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist" rel="nofollow">https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79250?artist_id=4285&l...</a><p>It could be a generative work of art -- but wait -- the vertical stripes where the masking tape was peeled away leave small amount of paint bleeding into the stripes. Why? It tells you something about how it was made. Cold geometric forms made with a human touch. Visit the Joseph Albers, Piet Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt paintings and there's arbitrariness and human touch in them all.<p>So, I would ask you -- what is the meta-narrative of this generative art? What is the story behind it? Does it inspire you? Do you feel like you are looking at art? Or a modern art-themed screensaver?
Another interesting artist in this genre:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/inconvergent" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/inconvergent</a><p><a href="https://img.inconvergent.net/" rel="nofollow">https://img.inconvergent.net/</a>
For anyone interested in the history of generative art and its parent discipline "(new) media art", some historical resources:<p>- <a href="http://generative.net/read/home" rel="nofollow">http://generative.net/read/home</a><p>- <a href="http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/" rel="nofollow">http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/</a><p>- <a href="http://userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/book/infoartsbook.html" rel="nofollow">http://userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/book/infoartsbook.html</a><p>- <a href="http://archive.aec.at/" rel="nofollow">http://archive.aec.at/</a>, and <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da76a6194bfc5184a427c5b3.pdf?1376461955" rel="nofollow">https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da...</a><p>- <a href="http://dada.compart-bremen.de/" rel="nofollow">http://dada.compart-bremen.de/</a><p>- <a href="http://turbulence.org/" rel="nofollow">http://turbulence.org/</a><p>- <a href="http://neural.it/" rel="nofollow">http://neural.it/</a> (magazine)<p>- <a href="http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/" rel="nofollow">http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/</a><p>- <a href="http://www.nettime.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nettime.org/</a> (classic net.art mailing list)<p>- <a href="http://we-make-money-not-art.com/" rel="nofollow">http://we-make-money-not-art.com/</a> (previous-generation blog)<p>- <a href="http://www.creativeapplications.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.creativeapplications.net/</a> (current generation blog)<p>Referring to Naon as a "prodigy" is a deeply out-of-context claim.
I think Naon is very distinctive for his embracement of the importance of human touch & influence in generative art. His choice of color, his adjustment of the shape and form in the work (either intentional or accidental) all produce works that have a human element to them even as they are generated by a Processing script. Automation is a tool and a big element of the work, but the vision of the artist and his creation plays a big part in what the end result looks like.<p>I've often wondered - and maybe this is an actively explored area of art - what it would look like to attempt to remove <i>all</i> human impact from the process of generative art. A human will write the code, so maybe that's impossible, but how far divorced from the influence of the coder can the resulting work be? Do we just end up at random noise, or is it still possible to make something pleasing without a conscious guiding hand? Distribution-mimicking methods like GANs are very "hands-off" like this in principle, but of course are influenced by the training data. Interested to see how generative art continues to play out in the future.
Joshua Davis [0] has been doing generative art (mostly Flash/actionscript) since late 90’s. Took a class of his once and it was amazing (as is his art).<p>If OP subject is prodigy, Davis is the grandfather.<p><a href="https://joshuadavis.com" rel="nofollow">https://joshuadavis.com</a>
Generative art is a fascinating space - it's in its infancy for sure - I've been getting into it this past year and wrote my first algorithm about a year ago:<p><a href="https://anemy.github.io/concentric/" rel="nofollow">https://anemy.github.io/concentric/</a><p>Like all art, it comes down to who witnesses it, and how it makes them feel. However - there's a definite gap between seeing something in real life versus digitally which I'd like to see Naon bridge. There's a large community of plotters which are doing a good job of bringing generative art into the real world. Definitely worth checking out the twitter hashtag:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/plottertwitter?src=hash" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/hashtag/plottertwitter?src=hash</a><p>Naon cranks out amazing compositions at an astounding rate, it makes me real happy to see him get some good exposure like this.<p>One of the cofounders of Etsy, Jared Tarbell, is also a great artist and worth checking out: <a href="http://www.complexification.net/gallery/" rel="nofollow">http://www.complexification.net/gallery/</a><p>If you'd like to see more generative works, the subreddit is a good starting place: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/</a>
Apparently, he published all of his code (I didn't see any mention of where). Regarding the color -- he mentions being careful with the palette, but I wonder how he gets it to turn out correctly (assuming it's RNG). It seems like you would have to keep generating new instances until you find one that looks pleasing.<p>One algorithm that comes to mind:<p><pre><code> 1. Choose a color palette and initial resolution.
2. Implement generative features at current resolution.
3. Generate the output and until it "looks right".
4. Increase feature resolution.
5. Go to step 2.
</code></pre>
In other words, one could keep generating prints until the locations and extents of the sampled colors "looks right", then keep the random seed and continue implementing finer details until they "look right", etc.<p>This will be the second time I drop this on HN this week, but check out Primitive Pictures[0] if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Also, I highly recommend Schiffman's YouTube channel[1] which goes into depth on how to get started with processing (and p5.js, the browser/canvas version). Note that the artist in the article learned how to do this by reading Schiffman's book, which is covered in a series of tutorials in the linked YouTube channel.<p>[0] <a href="https://github.com/fogleman/primitive" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fogleman/primitive</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw</a>
I don't think we're being radical enough. I think this kind of art is fantastic, but it copies human-designed art. Let's do things that aren't possible with paint or crayons - let's do multi-dimensional time-shifting video art.<p>I guess we need to do stuff that looks like 'normal' art first, to get people used to it.
I've been making art from randomly generated numbers for years. It's a realization of Pollock's objective where the viewer's subconscious is the only artist free from bias of any other person, a conduit of the mind.<p><a href="https://imgur.com/a/2qRHjxl" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/2qRHjxl</a>
I believe the purpose of Art is to reveal the soul of the Artist. This is why simply copying (or trying to emulate) the work of another artist is not considered art. However, learning to follow the rules set by others is a helpful stepping stone to striking out on your own and breaking those rules.
One has to remember that "generative art" only characterizes techniques for generating pictures. Art itself is about what the picture makes people feel, or what they have to say. Just making pictures for the only purpose of being "beautiful" is fine, just not very artful...
Discovered him on Twitter last year and was immediately blown away to see how his compositions resembled futurist and constructivist works to an uncanny extant. (Malevich, Kandinsky et al.) There is something about his choice of color palette that makes him really stand apart.
These are some beautiful images. I am relieved to see this article is about a person and not an algorithm. I wish I knew what quality it is about these that are more appealing. I think it is the abstract nature of it. Some look like flowers, some like 80s pop art, some reminiscent of Dali. The images remind me of specific human shared experiences without having to reproduce an dog eyeball in the middle. Human Generative (algorithms + design) vs AI Generative (algorithms only). Maybe I am biased for team human and if someone told me these images were created by a neural network I would be more critical. Although I don't think these could be created by a NN. Certainly not picking different themes for each set.
Interesting that he wants to keep it all digital and prefers it not made tangible.<p>Seems like it would be much harder to make any sort of living from your work by limiting the format to just digital.<p>Really cool nonetheless.
I really do love generative art, but this article was so hyperbolic I couldn't make it through. I think this is generating designs, nice patterns for throw pillows, but not art. The only generative artist I know who deserves the article's level of idolatry is Tarn Adams, because Dwarf Fortress actually creates stories and scenarios that provoke thought.
This gives me an idea. What it game textures for 3D models were entirely made up of shaders/generative algorithms. The entire game could be rendered with an equation and never have to load assets.
Interesting stuff. All works of art tend to build on what came before, this does so in a much more direct way. At what point is something a derivative work rather than original?
I know art is whatever people describe as art but I can't really get behind this specific kind of creation. To me this creates as much emotion as a gravatar and reminds me of my dabbling in fractal art. Just hit random until something nice comes out.