Alex Fogel's Generative Art Blog

Definition of Generative Art

2009-03-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

It's almost 7:00AM and I've been working all night. I think pretty much anything I write at this point in time can be classified as generative art.

Justification

Normal operating hours Alex decided to stay up really late and work. By dong so, he inadvertadly created ridiculously tired, not really experiencing a normal dose of reality Alex, which can definitely be classified as a machine. So ... um ... yah.

System of Code

2009-03-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

The next project we were asked to do had a new encompassing term. This time instead of creating a machine, we were asked to create a system.

It was with much hesitation that I decided to abandon the marbles. The fact that I had filled three liquor bottles with them helped me make the decision to go down a different path. They just looked too good on my counter and I did not want to take them out. We had a god run, but it was time to move on.

Being that one can pretty much describe anything as a system. I thought, why not make a system that would be unexpected and have an element of surprise. So my goal was then to set up my computer to play a random sound whenever someone walked in front of it. What it would also do at the same time, which was much less noticeable, was snap a picture. For the entire presentation, people would try to trigger it so they could hear the sound, but unknowingly triggering the camera as well. Toward the end of the presentation day, I sent all of the pictures to Photoshop and told it to turn them into an HDR. This was interesting because generally when a photographer wants to create an HDR shot, he’ll expose the same shot multiple times. Then Photoshop determines the best way to put them together based on proper exposure. These pictures that were taken in class were shot on my webcam and not formatted in this fashion what so ever. After the filter compiled, it spit out an interest image, which was a twisted distorted combination of all of the shots it took during that period of time.
____________________________________

Process:

Create an apple automator action
Get folder content
Run it through this script (Selects a random File)
on run {input, parameters}
return some item of input
end run
Open Finder item
Launch application – soundtrack pro
Record a macro(watch me do) that goes to soundtrack pro and play the current track.

The Application “EvoCam” can trigger actions as well as capturing photos. Set it to run the action and take a shot simultaneously.
____________________________________

Smearing Marbles

2009-03-13T02:30:00.001-07:00

For the next project, we were asked, this time, to have your machine make a mark rather than a sound. Brooke and I worked in tandem on this project. After getting together and hashing out some ideal, we decided that it was time for a Home Depot run. There we bought a poster-sized piece of sheet metal. It was smooth and flexible which made it a perfect solution to our preliminary plans.

We eventually ended up with a machine that dropped marbles onto a small table (using the same device from the last project). We directed the marbles toward the edge, where they fell off onto the sheet metal, which we bent into the shape of a half-pipe. Before releasing the marbles we doused the sheet metal with acrylic paint. When the marbles fell onto it, they rolled off of it smearing the paint leaving an interesting generative mark on the metal.

Lost My Marbles

2009-03-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

So I'd like to take a trip back in time if I may, to the first Generative Art project. We were all given a sheet of rules and told that we had to follow them. So, being the impressionable student that I am, I made an effort to follow them as carefully as possible. It wasn't until the day we presented that I found out that many of my class mates blatantly ignored these rules, and still had successful projects. I had no problem with most of the rules, however "The machine must run by itself" was the rule that I got hung up on. More on that later.

I conceived this project by plunging into the memories of my childhood. When I was but a lad, I would take apart old blinds. Due to their concave shape, they carried marbles quite nicely. The blinds were limiting in structural integrity, and I've always wanted to improve upon my childhood techniques. This project was the perfect opportunity. I had a clear objective in mind. I wanted to create a machine that launched marbles through the air slamming into some wind chimes.

After conceiving this idea, I realized that I would need materials to do this. Money, however, was in short supply, so the first thing I did was clear a spot in my wallet for recites. Here is a list of supplies I acquired and where I got them from:

Home Depot

1 - 10' SCH-40 PVC Pipe

2 - 60° SCH-40 PVC angled couplers

1 - Set - Utility funnels

Michael's Art Supply

4 - Bags of clear marbles (A LOT of marbles)

Sears Hardware

1 - Wind Chimes (you'd be surprised how hard they were to find in the winter. 3rd try's a charm)

Walmart (The next day)

1 - Auto feeding paintball hopper

My Apartment

1 - Roll - gaffers tape

1 - Roll - electrical tape

2 - Quick clamps

1 - Tripod

After getting these things, I rushed back to the shop at school to give it a try. My concept was to drop all of the marbles in the funnel and let them feed them selfs out into the PVC, then to the coupler, then through the air to the Wind Chimes. Everything worked beautifully ... accept the funnel. After several failed attempts at cutting it up and making holes larger I gave up for the night and went to bed. The next day, I set out to try a new strategy. I got an auto feeding paintball hopper, which is designed to push paintballs out of it into a paintball gun. I thought that this would agitate the marbles enough to keep them from getting stuck. I loaded it up and turned it on. Three marbles came out and then inevitably it jammed. This device that I just spent thirty dollars on ended up keeping me busy for the majority of that night. The problem was the turbine that pushed the marbles out was made out of a flexible rubber and the marbles just got stuck under the blades, which would bend up and try to slide over the heavy glass. This wouldn't do. After fooling around with less permanent solutions, I moved on to the soldering iron. I trimmed the safety end off of a safety pin and soldered the fulcrum to the motor. I then positioned the pins at roughly a 70° angle. This allowed it to turn without jamming. The pins now had a new purpose. Not to push the marbles out of the hole, but to agitate them enough to let gravity do the work without the marbles jamming against the side. Once that problem was solved, it was a simple issue of setting up the pipe and launcher on a slope and hanging the wind chimes in the marbles approximate path. I then had a working marble launching, chime ringing, automatic machine. The last step was returning most of the hardware to their respective stores.

The rules were a pain in the ass, but I still had a lot of fun with it. In a way, it brought me back to my childhood.

Kinetic Art - Theo Jansen

2009-01-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

Theo Jansen is a cutting edge Dutch artist. Theo, however, is not what you would generally think of as an artist. Calling himself a kinetic sculptor, Theo is a man with a dream.

His medium is sculpture, but he doesn’t just build static sculptures, and referring to his works as moving sculptures would be an understatement. Jansen’s passion lies in the fathering of a species of intelligent, self-sustaining beach dwellers that he calls the strandbeesten.

“Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind.”(Strandbeest.com)

Jansen works both as an artist and an engineer. Wings flapping, his machines consume wind as their primary means of sustenance. Roaming up and down the beaches of the Netherlands, they use pneumatic pressure and inertia to power their elegantly simple systems, and are capable of detecting and avoiding danger.

Although the dream of Theo Jansen is not yet complete, he is showing a lot of promise and displaying a great deal of determination. His work is very unique and is supported by many.

Below, Jansen and his creations are featured in a BMW commercial.

I’ve also included a TED.com presentation. (If you don’t already know about ted.com, you should check it out. It’s a fantastic site with presentations on a multitude of topics)

You can visit his web site HERE, where you can find out more about his work, his book and the documentary that is currently in production.

BMW Commercial

TED

Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures