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Archive for October, 2006

Fractal Trick or Treat?

"Better" than Pollock?

Back twenty years ago in high school English class I read or studied, or something, Julius Caesar by George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw, as he is called by those who are familiar with him, was something new for us high school students. We were quite familiar with Shakespeare as the school curriculum included one of his plays every year, like some sort of literary vitamin pill.

There are a lot of great literary things to be found in Shakespeare. Like dill pickles, it’s an aquired taste, and five plays in five years wasn’t enough for me. I came to view Shakespeare’s lofty reputation as an exaggeration, the “official playright” of an imperial nation wanting to present themselves as the possessors of an old and well established, and uniquely English, culture of arts and letters.

The year before Shaw’s Julius Caesar, we had been chained to our desks and deprived of the necessities of life until we finished reading, or pretending to read, Anthony and Cleopatra by that great playright, “the Bard.”

In introducing Shaw’s play, the teacher kept repeating (you have to do that a lot in high school English classes) how this play by Shaw presents some of the historical events found in Anthony and Cleopatra in a more historically accurate context.

Oh yes. I opened the book and saw the many scholarly primary sources that Shaw had exhaustively studied in order to begin writing his definitive play about Julius Caesar. It was shameless name dropping of classical historians. I didn’t like this guy any more than Shakespeare.

Jumping to the back of the book, where the publishers add in all sorts of extra stuff, like commentary and analysis of the play by eminent authorities, I began to see the old bearded Shaw in shockingly different light.

“Better Than Shakespeare?” was the title of an essay about Shaw’s play written by the Shaw himself! Wasn’t it blasphemy to consider someone else greater than Shakespeare? And then to say it about yourself, that was even worse, assuming of course there was even space below such already depraved behaviour to sink even further.

All of a sudden I liked Shaw. He’s Irish (the teacher repeated that a lot too) and apparently back then, maybe even now too, he was something of an outsider and not supposed to knock revered English writers off their marble pedestals.

To some of the English it was an embarrasment to have the historical absurdities of Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra pointed out, and particulary by an Irishman. But then Shaw went one painful step further and corrected Shakespeare’s mistakes by writing his own revised version of the events in his own play, Julius Caesar. Perhaps Shaw was thinking we could now throw Shakespeare’s old play away and use his new and improved one in it’s place?

I really didn’t like Shaw’s play much. Too “didactic” or teachy. You’d think it was intentionally written for a high school English class to study. But I liked his irreverent sense of humour. He should of stuck to making fun of the establishment instead of trying to become one of them.
 

Jar Jar Agonistes

The Robot’s Renaissance

Although most labels in the art world have a number of interpretations, I define algorithmic art as artwork made with algorithms. An algorithm is a series of instructions.

Usually these instructions are computer commands and algorithmic art is made with computers. But it’s the “mechanical” component that makes algorithmic art special and the machine doesn’t necesarily have to be a computer.

Fractal art is a type of algorithimic art. The algorithms are primarily the fractal formulas but also the other programming components which contribute to appearance of the generated image.

Although purists would say true algorithmic art has no human modifications to it or any other human contibution (except creating the algorithm or operating the machine, of course), such a strict approach rarely works.

A small amount of human guidance yields enormous profits in the creation of algorithmic art. In fractal art this guidance comes in the form of adjusting coloring effects or choosing what part of the image to display, or adding layers, or any other arbitrary decisions that interrupt or alter the process of image generation.

Although randomly chosen parameter settings could theoretically reproduce all the adjustments made by a skilled fractal artist, I have never seen any examples of such mechanically made fractal art (ie. having a skilled appearance).

So algorithmic art (if you accept my non-purist definition) is primarily a collaboration between artists and machines. The more decisions the artist makes, the less mechanical the artwork is. The less involved the artist is with the process, then the more mechanical it is.

The machine becomes just another tool when complex layering and coloring are involved, similar to a brush in the hand of a painter… Digital brush, Digital canvas –Digital da Vinci.

But when the machine is elevated to the lofty status of “Giver of Art”, “Oh, Silicon One”… It’s every graphic utterance received with rejoicing and exultation… The artist reduced to a selfless slave, a lever pulling worm toiling in the shadow of The Great Mechanical Meta-Marvelous Master of Algorithmic Awe-Wonder…

Well, that’s different.

I need to clean out my browser bookmarks. I accidently clicked on some old thing anonymously titled Main Menu, Algorithmic Art.

Richard Nixon once said that the reason people go to hear politicians speak is not to find out what they’re going to do if they get elected, but to find out, “What makes this guy tick?” We’re all curious about people and why they do what they do.

Honestly, I could never figure out what this guy saw in his own work. Why the excitement?

He’s got a pen or marker attached to a drafting plotter that draws the results of some algorithm. It’s nowhere near as interesting as even a simple mandelbrot formula would be. Has he never heard of fractals?

This second visit to his website, after a space of about a year, left me with a different impression. I think I know what makes this guy tick, now.

Look at the presentation of his, uh, simple images: Artwork framed alongside -and giving equal space to- the binary code of the algorithm that made them. The 0′s and 1′s starting and ending with a short strip of gold leaf!

I was touched by his reverence for the machine and I felt ashamed of the insulting things I had once thought about his work.

He’s not ashamed of the mechanical roots of his artwork. In fact, he seems to see it as something to be admired, as if binary code could almost be beautiful all on it’s own. Just like some architects who allow a building’s stuctural components, like iron girders and concrete pillars, to be exposed as elements of style, having their own massive and mechanical, primitive charm.
 

India Ink-194.8bf

Download parameter file “bug05.ink”

I’ve found a new toy.

It makes everything look like it was ripped out of an old book, so to speak.

Costs money. $15 US. Fully functional demo download.

Just like uscomic.8bf, it often takes uninteresting images and transforms them, lifting them to higher quanta.

People like me need all the help they can get.

I mostly use the Bayer pattern, but the bubbles can be pretty good too.

I use queen (or burn), softlight, or procedural+. Overlay has worked once or twice. Some of them seem to do the same thing.

I think you’ve got 2 weeks to buy it before it stops working, but maybe you can rip them off for longer.

Download parameter file “bug17.ink”

It’s one of the cheapest filters made by Flaming Pear, but it’s also their best. I tried out a bunch of the other more expensive ones, but I didn’t find them useful. I don’t think freaks like me are their target market.

I think it just adds a patterned layer and merges it with a preset method, but the Bayer method is a little more sophisticated. I’m just guessing.

One of the best rationalizations for not paying for shareware is: I’m not finished checking it out yet, I need another year. The next one is: I’m not a rich professional like they are, so I don’t need to pay. Next: If they want people to buy it, then why are they giving it away for free? After that: Pretty soon I’m going to be so sick of using this thing I won’t want it anymore, and why should I pay for something I don’t want? Finally: Stealing is a victimless crime, like throwing a rock into a crowd.

When used with the GIMP it’s really slow. Which is too bad since the GIMP has tear off menus which makes it a lot more convenient to access frequently used filters. XnView is much faster, but it’s hard getting used to having only one level of undo.

Download parameter file “beetle05b.ink”

What does it do? It dithers the image using a variety of patterns. Not really, but that’s the general effect. Dithering is much like a texture layer, but it can also re-draw the image, creating something that is categorically different.

Dithering or half-tone patterns can be very creative, altering the color and appearance of the image in intriguing ways. But not always.

Saving as a jpg makes for smooth gradients, but to keep the colors from changing (for the worse) you’ll have to up the quality to the point the file size is ridiculously big. I save them as 256 color pngs, indexed in Irfanview which has a good dithering algorithm that preserves gradients adequately.

When something works out well, ask yourself why and try to reproduce those conditions. Digital skill is all about becoming part of the algorithm.

Download parameter file “crown09q.ink”

Filters are tools, they don’t do anything on their own. That just about describes me too. Computers make everything so easy. That’s why we’ve accomplished so much.

This filter really works well with the Inkblot Kaos fractal program. I only use the first “stalks” setting, but that one makes such awesome stuff I wouldn’t have time for any others. The formula parser allows you to dream up enough creative variations to keep you busy for ages.

I think of the two programs as a team: Inkblot is the pottery wheel which forms the clay, India Ink is the kiln that fires it and adds the glaze.