Following the previous post about art through code – here is Erik Natzke‘s work. Incredible how such an organic feel can be created with entirely digital tools. Erik himself says how he wishes he could do this with real paint.

In contrast to Keith Peter’s work, code is used here to create a tool (paintbrush) instead of coding the ‘pixels’ of the artwork itself. The debate remains if coding an artwork is not so much creating something new but rather mirroring mathematics. But this is a fallacy of the human mind seeing any piece of art which might seem highly complex can be translated into a mathematical formula. What else is the code captured in a JPG but a simple rendition of a seemingly complex visual which could be rendered even more truthful to the mathematical ‘pure form’ by increasing the complexity of the code.

So the difference is in the consciousness of the human mind behind an artwork. When coding an artwork you are supposedly ‘conscious’ of every ‘pixel’ you create whereas with Natzke’s brush your consciousness, because of the limitations of our brainpower, is not grasping the complexity of what your hands are doing. But it’s still an imitation of a mathematical formula which hasn’t necessarily been created in the universe (yet) but which exists as part of the endless creations mathematics can bring forth.

Weird how, often, human consciousness formulates its own limitations as ‘chance’ just because it cannot grasp the complexity.

Recently I’ve been in awe of a specific computer art which relies heavily on the use of code to generate images. There are 2 artists who really made an impression on me of which I’ll address one in this post and one later on in another.

The work you see here is by Art From Code who was featured on Space Collective’s gallery page a few days ago. Keith Peters, the man behind the matter, calls his work generative art which [...] refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.

These images were created by writing some code and letting it run al by itself (this in contrast to the variety I’ll discuss in a next post). The question is whether the artists puts a ‘random string’ in the code which leaves a certain margin for chance to define the outcome of the artwork. In theory you could code a complete artwork out in advance and it would be clonable to the pixel. The code would be a mathematical DNA print of the image and the artist has complete control over the image.

But as soon as some randomness is programmed into the code, the artist loses control and it’s actually chance creating an artwork according to the rules and boundaries set by the artist. The artist can predict only a certain percentage of the outcome but ultimately it’s letting a dog with paint on hiw paws run within a compound. You know the result will be dog paws all over the floor within the compound but chance (or in this case the dog) decides all the rest.

As Keith Peters mentions himself, definitions of generative art are multiple.

On a side note, Space Collective is all over the internet. And I don’t understand what it is. This group of creatives hoists a platform with projects completely unintelligible to me. A mix of images and words as philosophical rants which are intriguing to say the least but surpass my ability to extract structure from chaos. I love it.

UPDATE: Just got my invite for Space Collective. No idea what I’m getting myself into.