My personal understanding of Generative Art
Generative Art provides me with an outline of the definition of generative art, and its examples and practical applications. After reading this article, I found that there are similarities and differences between computational generative art and the artworks I have created for Mini Projects 1 and 2. In brief, a main feature of generative art is randomness, no matter whether it’s pseudorandom or true random, which doesn’t exist in Mini Project 1 and 2. In Mini Project 1, I just pre-drew the scene I imagined on iPad and used coding to determine the exact placement of lines and shapes, ultimately rendering a complete piece of artwork. Obviously, this has nothing to do with randomness. However, in Mini Project 2, I use variables to store information, which is also used in generative artworks in the passage. To sum up, generative art is a kind of artwork in which a person gives instructions and orders to an external system, whether a human, a computer, or other objects, thus indirectly completing the painting.
My own drawing system
A set of rules I created:
First, draw ten dots randomly on the canvas.
Next, draw circles of different sizes randomly with these points as the center.
Then, color these circles in blue with the same saturation and different lightness.
Finally, cut part of the border of the canvas
The outcome:
Generative?
My painting is kind of generative but not completely, because I’m the one who gives the orders and the one who carries them out. An artwork can only be called generative if it is executed by a computer or a person other than me. I incorporated randomness both in the position and the color lightness of the circles. That is to say, I tried my best to not directly control the process and the result of this artwork. Randomness aroused my curiosity and passion for the unknown during drawing.
Interesting result
One interesting result emerging from my set of rules is that despite the randomness of the circles’ position, the artwork doesn‘t look messy. (But that could be due to my subjective willingness to some extent.) The random points existed silently on the canvas and looked plain. However, when different sizes of circles appeared, the overall tone of the artwork was set. Later, colors made this artwork come to life. Thanks to the randomness of color brightness, these circles have a back-and-forth interplay in this two-dimensional canvas, which contributes to one of the most important features of art- liveliness.
Control and unpredictability
To be honest, I did visualize the final image in my head before, but the outcome looked totally different from my visualization. On one hand, a general outline of the painting was under my control, and I chose my favorite color, blue. After all, I was the one who made the rules. On the other hand, the random sizes and lightness were unpredictable. Despite the fact that I couldn’t follow the rule of randomness perfectly like a computer, I did my best to abandon my mind and let the random take control.
Conclusion
This article casts a light on some typical generative artworks, which is completely a new field tome. I was impressed that those artworks are not directly controlled by humans, but start from humans’ original order. Randomness gives them infinite possibilities, and that is what the charm lies in.