I. Reading Reflection

After reading the article about Generative Art, I believe it refers to the artwork that unfolds under the artist’s instruction with ambiguous concepts and elusive outcomes. In retrospect,  In Creative Coding Lab, my Mini Project 1 is about drawing codes and the second one is about interactive drawing, which is similar to Generative Art but diverges in different ways. The results of my Mini Projects were partly envisioned before I coded the instructions while the actual coding could be various and the results were slightly different from what I expected. I think this is similar to PSEUDORANDOM as the author mentioned in the article though I didn’t introduce random() in my programs. However, both of my projects are based on objects in social life, a water jug and a cup of boba tea. On the other hand, the examples mentioned in the article are more abstract for their connections of shapes and nodes or mimesis of the natural world. I would wonder whether in Generative Art the aura of randomness itself outweighs the author’s expression. In other words, is it a kind of meta-art to some extent?

II. Instructions for Art

My instructions for art are as follows:

1. Draw an eye
2. Create another one with the same size and share the same “pupil” with a 45-degree rotation
3. Repeat 2 until there is an overlap
4. Connect the corner of the eyes with a circle and use the circle as a new and larger “pupil”
5. Use the new “pupil” as you repeat 1

I was inspired by how my parents met each other in the first place, which could be my origin story. My grandpa, my mom’s dad, and my dad’s friend went to visit the same ophthalmologist for their poor lens. The expectation would be “eyes” connected to the same “pupil”. The instructions are open to interpretation when it comes to the position of the very first eye and the rotation and the angle of the first eye in a new loop. These are the randomness. But I didn’t realize the latter until the last loop that could be created on the paper. In fact, what I visualized in my head at the beginning would be identical loops with different sizes. In the end, I managed to control the basic elements of the final piece and leave the unpredictability to the rotation.