ESSENTIAL READING

Why Love Generative Art

Over the last 50 years, our world has turned digital at breakneck speed. No art form has captured this transitional time period - our time period - better than generative art.

ON ArtNome

Epigenetic Painting

This paper explores issues related to software that I have developed for personal use in my studio. The software, called Hodos, can generate paintings which bear an uncanny resemblance to work I did before becoming involved with computers.

Some Thoughts on Generative Art

The following is a combination of segments from a few different talks I've given. It touches briefly on the history of generative art, as well as some of my experience with it.

Art Blocks and the Data of Generative Art

Following a year in which generative art went mainstream, Kyle Waters mines the data behind the platform that launched a new movement

ON RightClickSave

Variations On The Future

Toccata - A generative audiovisual composition by Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez and Andreas Rau captures a feeling of hope amid apocalyptic anxiety.

ON Outland

Aluan’s Chaotic 3-Act Play

Chaos Culture is a collection of vibrant colors and diverse shapes housed in a circular frame that looks like a petri dish.

ON Medium

How Does It Feel To Make Generative Art

I’ve recently been having a strong sensation that I am finding generative art, rather than creating it. Even so, when I asked other generative artists how the process feels to them, I expected that most would say it mostly feels like creation.

Generative Art Finds Its Prodigy

In this article, we interview contemporary generative art prodigy (my words, not his) Manolo Gamboa Naon from Argentina. 

ON ArtNome

Punks, Squiggles, and the Future of Generative Media

In many ways, generative art is the tip of the spear to much larger trends related to digital art, NFTs, and digital property. Generative art is a category of digital art in which artists use a computer to intentionally introduce randomness as part of the creation process, producing both expected and unexpected results.

ON Medium

What Makes NFT Art Valuable

From rarity to celebrity provenance, our guide looks at the non-tangible indicators of cryptoart value.

ON 1stDibs

How to Be an Artist

33 rules to take you from clueless amateur to generational talent (or at least help you live life a little more creatively)

ON Vulture

Hicetnunc and the Merits of Web3

Largely created by one developer, Rafael Lima, and a loose group of volunteer contributors, it has been an amazing, if haphazard, experiment in decentralization and distributed design in the ethos of “web3,”a poorly-termed yet novel paradigm of building web applications atop decentralized public blockchains.

What Makes a Good Generative Agent?

It’s an interesting question to consider and my objective is to glean a few nuggets of reflection as we consider what makes an excellent agent.

GPT-3 and me: A Generative Coding Study

The question I had on my mind when starting this process was whether a natural language processing AI like GPT-3 could be creative.

ON fx(text)

Sarah Meyohas Curates a Gen-Art Show

Aesthetics, AI and algorithms come together in “Coded Elegance.” As its curator says, “The enjoyment you may draw from a generative-art NFT is really down to the craftsmanship of the code itself.”

ON 1stDibs

An Engine for the Imagination: The Rise of AI Image Generators

An interview with Midjourney founder David Holz

ON The Verge

The Rise of Long-Form Generative Art

An essay on the rise of generative art

Packing Polygons

I've been packing lots of irregular polygons into the canvas, and discovered some interesting (and some annoying) geometry along the way.

Circle Packing and Development Logic

Circle packing is something that may seem complex at first but is actually quite simple.

ON fx(text)

Deconstructing Bézier Curves

Graphists, animators, game programmers, font designers, and other graphics professionals and enthusiasts are often working with Bézier curves. They're popular, extensively documented, and used pretty much everywhere.

How do Smart Contracts Actually Work?

From Ethereum to Tezos, Nate Maddrey explains what makes smart contracts so important to the world of NFTs

ON RightClickSave

Creating Soft Textures Generatively

Most of the generative artwork I see exclusively uses hard, sharp transitions. Some pieces use smooth gradients or basic transparency to create transitions. Very few pieces go beyond that.

Flow Fields

An essay on flow fields

How to Hack a Painting

This talk was given at Strange Loop 2017, and describes a watercolor-inspired generative art algorithm that Tyler Hobbs created.

Measure the line width of your pen with a plotter

I wrote a short article about my technique to measure pen line width for plotters

Non-Circular Packing

There are great circle packing algorithms and descriptions out there. I wanted to do something similar, but for non-cicular and image-based shapes.

Tiny Code

Making of #つぶやきProcessing sketch (part 1)

ON Medium

Signed Distance Fields

In his own words “‘I wonder how you make a 3D shape which looks like different shapes from different angles’. Signed Distance Fields was his answer

How to create a dimensionless project with p5js

In generative art, it is important to create dimensionless projects, ie projects that return exactly the same result regardless of the size of the canvas.

ON fx(text)

How Generative Music Works - A Perspective

This presentation is about making music by designing systems that make music.

On Generative Algorithms

I've always been fascinated with patterns. It doesn't really matter what kind of patterns; I've played with networks, leaves and leaf venation, branches, lightning, flocking, tracing outlines of shapes, river formation, rock sediments, landscapes, slime mold, lichens, reaction-diffusion, cellular automaton, some fractals, and a few other things.

Aurelie Nemours

Tweet thread about Aurelie Nemours

ON Twitter

Form+Code: In Design, Art and Architecture

Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture offers an in-depth look at the use of software in a wide range of creative disciplines.

Generative Design

Book on Generative Design, including all the code

Computer Art

The computer performs various functions which in the broader sense seem to be acts of intelligence, i.e. manipulation of symbols, processing of information, obeying complex rules, even learning by experience. Nevertheless, the computer is not capable of making abstractions, and is devoid of the three prime forces behind creativity— imagination, intuition, and emotion. Despite this, the computer has been making an appearance as a budding artist since about 1960.

ON Studio

Toxi - Metacritique of gen-art critique

Toxi provides a comprehensive metacritique of 'how to criticize gen-art' in a tweet thread

ON Twitter

Waiting for the “Drop”: Crypto-art and Speed

In crypto, as in war, stasis is death. You will miss the drop.

ON HyperAllergic

Generative art: the creatives powering the AI art boom

Generative art is defined by the unseen hand – a system or algorithm or AI-powered design program that, working with variables and within parameters established by the artist, can generate almost infinite outcomes. And for some, it’s the future.

ON Wallpaper

What is Generative Art?

An artwork may be generative in some ways and not in others. A piece could have generative aspects even if the artist didn’t have that intention. There are ways in which a painting could be considered generative.

On Crypto Art and NFTs

This post is a broad overview of the recently emerging “crypto art” space, including the use of “Non-Fungible Tokens” (NFTs) as a digital art distribution mechanism.

ON Matt DesLauriers Blog

In Your Computer

«There is this hacker slogan: “We love your computer.” We also get inside people's computers. And we are honored to be in somebody's computer. You are very close to a person when you are on his desktop.» Jodi, 1997

ON Amazon

Grant Riven Yun: The Story Behind My Art

Growing up in a household of artists as a child, art has been with me since the beginning.

ON Medium

A Touch of Code: Interactive Installations and Experiences

Thanks to the omnipresence of computers, cell phones, gaming systems, and the internet, a broad audience has traded its past reservations against technology for an almost insatiable curiosity for all things technical.

Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition

Josef Albers’s classic Interaction of Color is a masterwork in art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this influential book presents Albers’s singular explanation of complex color theory principles.

Meridian - The Book

Meridian presents a generative art project by the same name, created by artist and coder Matt DesLauriers

Optic Nerve

The narrator of Optic Nerve  is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her.

Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory

The first book on the philosophy and aesthetics of digital preservation examines the challenge posed by new media to our long-term social memory.

Seeing Slowly

When it comes to viewing art, living in the information age is not necessarily a benefit. So argues Michael Findlay in this book that encourages a new way of looking at art.

The Computer In Art

This fascinating book shows how computers may be used to produce drawings in black and white and in colour, as well as to make animated films and sculptures, and describes many of the representative achievements in the first decade of this activity. It will stimulate every reader to question the established definitions and boundaries of creative activity.

When the Machine Made Art

When the Machine Made Art examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, or what we refer to today as digital art. Tracing the heated debates between art and science, the societal anxiety over nascent computer technology, and the myths and philosophies surrounding digital computation, Taylor is able to identify the destabilizing forces that shape and eventually fragment the computer art movement.

White Heat Cold Logic

The history of a pioneering era in computer-based art too often neglected by post-war art histories and institutions.

Code as Creative Medium

An essential guide for teaching and learning computational art and design: exercises, assignments, interviews, and more than 170 illustrations of creative work.

Computational Drawing

This book explores computation, specifically the craft of writing computer code, as a medium for drawing. Exercises, essays, algorithms, diagrams, and drawings are woven together to offer instruction, insight, and theories that are valuable to practicing architects, artists, and scholars.

Make: Getting Started with p5.js

Making interactive graphics in JavaScript and Processing

Make: Getting Started with Processing.py

Making Interactive Graphics with Processing's Python Mode

Make: Getting Started with Processing

A Hands on Introduction to Making Interactive Graphics

Making Pictures With Generative Adversarial Networks

In this first non-technical introduction to emerging AI techniques, artist Casey Reas explores what it’s like to make pictures with generative adversarial networks (GANs), specifically deep convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGANs). This text is imagined as a primer for readers interested in creative applications of AI technologies.

Processing, 2nd ed: A programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists

The new edition of an introduction to computer programming within the context of the visual arts, using the open-source programming language Processing; thoroughly updated throughout.

The Book of Shaders

This is a gentle step-by-step guide through the abstract and complex universe of Fragment Shaders.

V&A Pattern: Digital Pioneers

The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, is the world’s greatest museum of art and design, with a vast collection that been an unparalleled resource for designers for 150 years. This new series of pattern books presents the range of the V&A’s superb collections.

The Nature Of Code

This book focuses on a range of programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems, from elementary concepts in mathematics and physics to more advanced algorithms that enable sophisticated visual results.

Computer Graphics, Computer Art

This book describes concepts and tools for computer graphics, computer animation, picture processing, computer-aided design, computer music, computer choreography and computer poetry. In addition, it gives a historical review from the origins of computer art to current developments.

A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer's Arrival in Art

This book documents a short but intense artistic experiment that took place in Yugoslavia fifty years ago but has been influential far beyond that time and place: the “little-known story” of the advent of computers in art.

Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation

A rich compilation of work by some of the most inventive minds in the field of digital design.

Véra Molnar - une rétrospective

In biographical notes, Vera Molnar is often introduced with these few words: “An abstract geometric artist since 1948”. Her ascending line is thus obviously abstract geometrical art, and her artistic predecessors are Kandinsky, Malevitch, Mondrian, and Klee. Vera Molnar, along with François Morellet and Julije Knifer, is among the representatives of conceptual art today in France.

Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction

Learning Processing, Second Edition, is a friendly start-up guide to Processing, a free, open-source alternative to expensive software and daunting programming languages. Requiring no previous experience, this book is for the true programming beginner.

Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age

Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 explores how the rise of computer technology, together with its emergence in popular consciousness, impacted the making of art in the age of the mainframe.

Algorithmen & Zeichen

Algorithmen & Zeichen contains eighteen essays (fifteen on German, three on English) from Frieder Nake — as well as an excerpt of his artistic work. The book is divided into three sections: Bild, Zeichen, Interface (image, sign, interface).

A Computer In The Art Room

Based on four years of research and numerous interviews with practitioners, this book uncovers the little known history of early British computer art. It is an amazing story and hard to comprehend that before the onset of personal computers, propriety software and the internet there was a real struggle for access which touched off an explosion of true British pioneering spirit.

Cybernetics, Art, and Ideas

"This volume of essays is the happy result of contacts and collaborations established during the three years devoted to the preparation of 'Cybernetic Serendipity'. Cybernetic Serendipity was an exhibition mounted at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the summer of 1968, which dealt with the relationship of the computer and the arts.

Pixel Sorting: Meeting Chaos Half-Way

In the decade-plus since its inception, Kim Asendorf’s “pixel sorting” technique has entrenched itself in the culture of digital artmaking. When the code was made open source in 2012, it proliferated and mutated.

Generative Art - A Practical Guide Using Processing

Generative Art presents both the technique and the beauty of algorithmic art. The book includes high-quality examples of generative art, along with the specific programmatic steps author and artist Matt Pearson followed to create each unique piece using the Processing programming language.

ON Amazon

What Remains of The NFT Hype

The hype surrounding digital works dominated the international art world for two years. Then the market collapsed, and buyers lost millions. Yet optimism still pervades the scene.

ON Spiegel International