Posts Tagged ‘algorithmic art’

New Algorithmic Art and a Processing Tutorial

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Aftermath Digital Painting
Aftermath Digital Painting, 32 x 16 inches

All in all this has been a very good day. It started too early when my alarm went off at 6:00am. While fixing my son’s lunch, I hit upon the following limerick, a testament to having gotten too little sleep (I didn’t go to bed till after 1:00am):


My alarm goes off at six o’clock
It always comes as quite a shock
There in bed I wish to lay
But I have to rise and face the day
Gee I hope I don’t get artist’s block

Seeing my son off to school and with coffee in hand I settled in at the computer. I began by putting the finishing touches on the web pages for my series of five works of algorithmic art titled Cubic Disarray. Fortunately most of the work was done for me by a program I wrote to fill in a skeleton art gallery web page with the relevant data from a control file. This program also produces the XML entries for my sitemap.xml and newsfeed.xml files. The five works in the Cubic Disarray series are:

Cubic Disarray: Division algorithmic art
Cubic Disarray:
Division

Cubic Disarray: Bisection algorithmic art
Cubic Disarray:
Bisection

Cubic Disarray: Impending Unity algorithmic art
Cubic Disarray:
Impending Unity

Cubic Disarray: Point of Radiance algorithmic art
Cubic Disarray:
Point of Radiance

Cubic Disarray: Turbulence algorithmic art
Cubic Disarray:
Turbulence

When I decided yesterday that I was going to add these to my web site and make them available for purchase, I knew that I wanted to give credit to Georg Nees, whose work Schotter was the inspiration for my series. My idea quickly snowballed out of control. My first impulse was to just give a line of credit on each page. My next impulse was to create a web page dedicated to Schotter (German for gravel). I then decided to write a program using Processing that would recreate Schotter. Once I had the program written, it seemed only natural to turn it into a tutorial.

This morning I finished work on the tutorial and published it, along with the Cubic Disarray series to my web site. Included in the tutorial are a side by side comparison of Nees’ original Schotter and the Processing recreation. If you are a Processing user or are just curious to learn about algorithmic art, then check out my Georg Nees, Processing, and a Schotter Tutorial

In other good news I heard from an art gallery in Chicago today that is interested in my art. Hopefully we’ll be a good match for each other. Right now some of my space art is being exhibited and is available for purchase from Paper Crown Gallery located in Arlington Heights.

Lastly and best of all I completed two digital paintings today. Now one of these, titled City Lights, I started today and finished today. The other painting, titled Aftermath, I only finished today. Believe it or not I actually began this piece in April 2009 and last worked on it in April 2009. For almost three years this piece sat collecting electronic dust before I quite by accident rediscovered it earlier today. At 16 x 32 inches, Aftermath is one of my larger pieces and I have used it to illustrate this post.

So today was definitely a day without artist’s block. But who knows what tomorrow holds.

Bookmark it:  Stumble It  Bookmark this on Delicious  Digg This  Technorati  Reddit Tweet It


The Art Exhibit, Art Gallery, Art Talk, and Algorithmic Art Tutorial

Friday, October 7th, 2011

Artist Mark Rothko and selected art works
Artist Mark Rothko and selected art works

It has been a busy week for me on the art front. The week began with my installation of nine of my art works at the Buehler YMCA in Palatine IL. Buehler YMCA is the second largest YMCA in Illinois with some 17,000 members. My art will be on display there through the end of the year. Art Exhibit at Buehler YMCA.

I delivered three of my space art works to the Paper Crown Gallery in Arlington Heights, IL. This soon to open gallery has a large exhibit space with a business plan that is not typical of other art galleries. Given the timing of the gallery’s opening - in the face of the threat of a double-dip recession - their novel business plan may be a recipe for success.

I attended the lecture Seeing Red: The Art and Life of Mark Rothko presented by art historian Jeff Mishur. The lecture title fragment "Red" is from the title of the Tony Award-winning play Red currently showing at the Goodman Theater. With respect to the lecture, while it provided biographical background on Rothko, the emphasis was on the development of Rothko’s signature painting style. So yes I spent the evening looking at lots of paintings of colored rectangles (see the image illustrating this post above). Frankly Rothko’s style has never appealed to my sense of aesthetics. The play Red at the Goodman Theater.

I also added a tutorial on using recursion to create algorithmic art to my web site. I used the Processing platform for the tutorial and provide the source code. This tutorial is an expanded version of a tutorial I wrote earlier this year which was published in CMD Journal. Tutorial: Recursion and Algorithmic Art Using Processing

Bookmark it:  Stumble It  Bookmark this on Delicious  Digg This  Technorati  Reddit Tweet It


Astronomical Art, Algorithmic Art, and Science Fiction

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Sands of Mars
Sands of Mars

The Capricon Science Fiction Convention opens today and runs through Sunday. I have a fairly busy schedule at the con this year. First I will be participating in the convention’s art show. I will have seven works of art in the show:

In addition to the art show, I will also be providing two presentations for the convention: Algorithmic Art: Where Art Meets Math and The Art of Astronomy.

Algorithmic Art: Where Art Meets Math gives a history of algorithmic art, discusses some of the concepts and takes a look at some of the software tools available today to those interested in algorithmic art.

The Art of Astronomy is a straight forward history of astronomical art which also includes a discussion of how I have created some of my astronomical art as well as providing an overview of how anyone can use freely available graphics software to work with the raw image data available online from the various NASA robotic missions.

In addition to my two presentations, I will also be participating on the following panels.

Panel: Do You Still Believe in the Future?
Description: They say the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” is thirteen and when you’re thirteen all sorts of things are possible in the future. Now that you’ve grown up, chronologically, if nothing else, do you still view the possibilities of the future the way you did when you hit that golden age? Is it possible to retain that hope and optimism or are humans naturally cynical? With co-panelists Michael D’Ambrosio, Butch Honeck and Dermot Dobson as moderator.

Panel: Nuclear Fission or Fusion or ???: What Will Power our Future?
Description: Wind…Water…Coal…Steam…Oil. Over the centuries our fuel choices have changed as we’ve found more effective alternatives. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the most effective alternative, nuclear fission, carries a strong negative, and fusion isn’t ready for prime time. What advances will fuel sources see in the next 50 years? 100 years? Will we ever run out of fuel? With co-panelists Jim Landis, Pat Nuccio, Isabel Schechter, and myself as moderator.

Panel: ISDC: The International Space Development Conference
Description: The International Space Development Conferences is coming to Chicago on Memorial Day weekend this year. Come learn what this professional conference has to offer and learn how you can attend at a discount. With co-panelists Raymond Cyrus and Tom Veal and myself as moderator.

Panel: Manned visit to Mars: Round Table Discussion
Description: Is it worth sending a man to Mars as opposed to unmanned probes? With co-panelists Brother Guy Consolmagno and Bill Thomasson as moderator.

See you at the con.

Bookmark it:  Stumble It  Bookmark this on Delicious  Digg This  Technorati  Reddit Tweet It