Cubic Disarray
June 23, 2024 9:39 AM Subscribe
Schotter – As a way of dipping my toe into generative art, I’ve been trying to recreate one of the most iconic images in computer-generated art: Schotter (“Gravel”, aka “Cubic Disarray”) by Georg Nees. Part 2.
That's really beautiful and explained in a wonderfully straightforward way. Loved this.
posted by oulipian at 10:25 AM on June 23
posted by oulipian at 10:25 AM on June 23
Back in 2016, I experimented with a program I wrote in Processing that used a simple algorithm to generate similar images. I wasn't aware before seeing this post today how I had unintentionally borrowed from "one of the most iconic images in computer-generated art". I don't know whether to be embarrased or proud of myself. Link
posted by TwoToneRow at 12:52 PM on June 23 [4 favorites]
posted by TwoToneRow at 12:52 PM on June 23 [4 favorites]
Oof, guess who had to run and fix a whole bunch of encoding errors (thaanks, MySQL ...) in the linked article?
To me, Schotter is the “Hello, World!”/Blink of the plotter world. You plot it out there to show that your workflow is functional. Recreating Nees' pRNG to get exactly the same vectors seems … well, not in the spirit of aleatory generative art. At least I get to side-eye the author's code that has
posted by scruss at 1:01 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
To me, Schotter is the “Hello, World!”/Blink of the plotter world. You plot it out there to show that your workflow is functional. Recreating Nees' pRNG to get exactly the same vectors seems … well, not in the spirit of aleatory generative art. At least I get to side-eye the author's code that has
import math and yet includes explicit constants 1.4142 and 3.14159, urgh …posted by scruss at 1:01 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
I love how meticulously he recreated this, finding the random number stream is genius to me. Now I'm curious what the design looks like with other seeds. Did Schotter work to pick a particularly good run?
Slightly related, the book Computer und Kunst, generative art in the '80s from East Germany.
posted by Nelson at 1:32 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
Slightly related, the book Computer und Kunst, generative art in the '80s from East Germany.
posted by Nelson at 1:32 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
Very cool. I've been dabbling in python and I might just play around with the code.
TwoToneRow... be proud of yourself. I might just print some of those when I need art to decorate my new house.
posted by kathrynm at 2:29 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
TwoToneRow... be proud of yourself. I might just print some of those when I need art to decorate my new house.
posted by kathrynm at 2:29 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
This is very cool - I’ve wanted to do some generative plotter art for a while for both fun and home-decor reasons. I don’t have the spare time at all for Child reasons, but one day! Plotters even seem reasonably accessibly priced now, although I could probably get my hands on one at a maker space.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:30 PM on June 23
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:30 PM on June 23
This is delightful.
I wasn't aware before seeing this post today how I had unintentionally borrowed from "one of the most iconic images in computer-generated art"
This is one of the things I like about geometric generative art, really—at the most basic level, the raw materials are small mathematical concepts, discrete little verbs like "rotate" and "translate" and "scale" and "randomize" that can apply to line segments and their cousins. The act of learning to explore that space is about recognizing the utility each of those verbs has, and starting to combine two or three of them in different ways, and what comes out is going to be different for everybody but there's a common ground of core ideas that emerge, even wholly independently, in everyone's initial forays into it.
There is a kind of implicit ur-language of the aesthetics of geometric generative art that reveals itself in how those commonalities between distinct people's work reveals themselves in aggregate. Schotter is a great piece not because it is unique or difficult or something only a singular mind could produce; it's in fact great because of how concisely and straightforwardly it captures some of the basic ideas behind this kind of art-making process. That emerged so early in the realm of computer/plotter art makes it iconic; that every new person who gets excited about making random geometric art ends up more less recreating it by accident if they don't do it on purpose is proof of how well it demonstrates the possibility space and spirit of this style of work.
Recreating Nees' pRNG to get exactly the same vectors seems … well, not in the spirit of aleatory generative art.
I agree but also I love the perversity of doing so and am glad that was part two of the project, after just exploring the original work in a more general way. Rebuilding the famous plot down to the bare metal like that is like understanding the plumbing of a classic building; it may not be what architecture per se is about, but it's fascinating to get to know something deep in its guts where people don't ordinarily look.
posted by cortex at 11:22 AM on June 24 [2 favorites]
I wasn't aware before seeing this post today how I had unintentionally borrowed from "one of the most iconic images in computer-generated art"
This is one of the things I like about geometric generative art, really—at the most basic level, the raw materials are small mathematical concepts, discrete little verbs like "rotate" and "translate" and "scale" and "randomize" that can apply to line segments and their cousins. The act of learning to explore that space is about recognizing the utility each of those verbs has, and starting to combine two or three of them in different ways, and what comes out is going to be different for everybody but there's a common ground of core ideas that emerge, even wholly independently, in everyone's initial forays into it.
There is a kind of implicit ur-language of the aesthetics of geometric generative art that reveals itself in how those commonalities between distinct people's work reveals themselves in aggregate. Schotter is a great piece not because it is unique or difficult or something only a singular mind could produce; it's in fact great because of how concisely and straightforwardly it captures some of the basic ideas behind this kind of art-making process. That emerged so early in the realm of computer/plotter art makes it iconic; that every new person who gets excited about making random geometric art ends up more less recreating it by accident if they don't do it on purpose is proof of how well it demonstrates the possibility space and spirit of this style of work.
Recreating Nees' pRNG to get exactly the same vectors seems … well, not in the spirit of aleatory generative art.
I agree but also I love the perversity of doing so and am glad that was part two of the project, after just exploring the original work in a more general way. Rebuilding the famous plot down to the bare metal like that is like understanding the plumbing of a classic building; it may not be what architecture per se is about, but it's fascinating to get to know something deep in its guts where people don't ordinarily look.
posted by cortex at 11:22 AM on June 24 [2 favorites]
This is really cool - i think the fact the authore went and found the old source is what makes it great. Like the they said - a lot of people make variations/imitations that are basically eyeballing, but cool to go back to the source and translate (and then you can fuck with it to see what arises).
In the process of making a sine wave based rendering thingy I've saved a bunch of glitches that rendered wrong with my code, because goddamn sometimes that's more fun that the actual project itself. What weirdness can result if I just fuck up one little thing, one number, suddenly things scale and stretch and feedback in ways I was not intending, but it can look beautiful.
So it says this was for a plotter, I admit I didn't realize Zuse had done plotter work, I mostly know him for the Z3 when I was looking up original computers. And now - I see a lot of fascinating history on his wiki (including a claim for early "universe is cellular automata" theory - take THAT Wolfram).
I was about to ask which language the original source was (at first I thought Fortran) but looks like Algol when following the link (if anyone was curious).
It says it was created in 68, so I wonder if this was using the pre-68 Algol since I imagine, the Algol-68 was probably still being designed at that point(?)
posted by symbioid at 11:46 AM on June 24 [1 favorite]
In the process of making a sine wave based rendering thingy I've saved a bunch of glitches that rendered wrong with my code, because goddamn sometimes that's more fun that the actual project itself. What weirdness can result if I just fuck up one little thing, one number, suddenly things scale and stretch and feedback in ways I was not intending, but it can look beautiful.
So it says this was for a plotter, I admit I didn't realize Zuse had done plotter work, I mostly know him for the Z3 when I was looking up original computers. And now - I see a lot of fascinating history on his wiki (including a claim for early "universe is cellular automata" theory - take THAT Wolfram).
I was about to ask which language the original source was (at first I thought Fortran) but looks like Algol when following the link (if anyone was curious).
It says it was created in 68, so I wonder if this was using the pre-68 Algol since I imagine, the Algol-68 was probably still being designed at that point(?)
posted by symbioid at 11:46 AM on June 24 [1 favorite]
If you're a Zuse fan and are ever in Berlin, be sure to visit the Technikmuseum. They have a terrific exhibit of the Z1. Nothing generative art about it but it's pretty to cool to see.
(Note: Zuse's work is forever tainted by the fact he was doing it for the Nazi government during the war.)
posted by Nelson at 12:01 PM on June 24 [1 favorite]
(Note: Zuse's work is forever tainted by the fact he was doing it for the Nazi government during the war.)
posted by Nelson at 12:01 PM on June 24 [1 favorite]
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