Generative art

Finally it is available: My very own generative art webshop. I have a selection of works I sell on that site, but I have created all these generative artworks:

More info please contact me: mark.knol [-at-] gmail.com.

Information

Over time, I have got a lot of requests from people who want to buy my art. That is very nice and motivates me to work on it a bit harder. Yes, I have tried to build a webshop myself, but I never finished it and wasn’t that good. I also tried to just wait until people contact me and print/sell myself. I get requests from people over the world, but it’s hard and expensive to transport around the world. I have no experience with selling stuff the right way. Oh and I have too high expectations about lots of things.

In my opinion, and that is all I know, the artworks are unique, look great, have nice details and just would look awesome in modern interiors. I think it’s stupid to do nothing with all the stuff I’ve created. So I stopped worrying about lots of things, and just started an online webshop at a site which prints and delivers for me. I think the quality is good.

What is generative art?

Generative art is a very young facet of the technology+art region. It essentially involves creating visuals using equations and algorithms instead of brush or pencil strokes. The artist lays out the rules of the game; the ‘if’s and ‘then’s, and lets pixels follow them to create stunning pieces of art.

For those who still don’t have a clue what I’m saying here and want to know what I am doing: I create little programs that creates moving lines and ribbons on the screen. Those are captured and drawn upon a virtual canvas. I don’t use real paint, but I am ‘painting’ with code.

How did it started?

The path to create things with code isn’t very linear. For me, it started creating art with code when I wanted to learn Actionscript 3, so all my generative stuff is Flash. This is an exiting and interesting all-round platform for creating interactive high-end applications, games, animations, websites and presentations. I use it to create artworks, so the possibilities are endless.

It was not really art at the first place, I think it were random lines drawed on screen. Most of the time I use the graphics API for this (lineTo and curveTo functions). I started adding colors, which were later picked from a photo to have nice natural colors. Then I learned to use gradients and created a ribbon like mouse-follower. I started playing with random motion. When I got a simple ribbon, I wanted to have lots of ribbons following my mouse, with some more fluid random motion (sometimes using perlin noise). Then I drawed them in a bitmapdata object, so it looks like there are millions of lines (because you can clear the graphics, but it stays on screen), which is awesome. Then I tried to blow out the maximum size of the bitmapdata so I can print it on big-ass canvasses.

Creativity and Technology

You should know how to code and you should also know how design works. It helps if you know what a function creates, and its is also nice to know if you know if that looks nice. For me, both parts are hard and there is a lot to explore. A hard part is composition. When you have lots of random stuff, it is hard to make a balance between chaos and controlled lines. I don’t feel myself as a ‘generative art master’ yet, because I still don’t feel I have that much control.

Of course in life everything is a learning process. So if you know a bit, you should know enough to get started and learn more about thing you haven’t done yet.

As you can see there are several aspects that could have attention if you want to learn creating generative arts. You have to start simple and extend it slowly. Just create a moving things, than try to replace it with a random shape, than try to use different colors, then make a lot of them (more means more fun), make them react on something. Use different assets, try different ways of coding. Do weird things. Some use music as input for movement, some bitmaps, some mathematical formulas and there is a lot more you can use as input or as controller.

There are several small snippets and info on my blog about the process. I don’t share much code, because I think the path to create cool stuff is more interesting than the final product itself. That said, most code is a mess. I think creating code that let the application create awesome stuff is the art in the generative process.

We want more!

I hope to re-start creating new generative arts this year. While writing this page, it reminds me of the stuff I have already created. I looked back and realized I should do more and push myself futher in creating cool stuff and things that I like to create. Please remind me!

Prices & Prints

All artworks in this set are for sale. I have a selection of works in my online shop. If you are interested to buy more artworks, you want some or custom work, or you’d like to print it in a magazine or something, please contact me. This also depends on what you like; I think there are a lot of possibilities. The artworks are created with high-resolution (between 80-100 megapixel) with lots of details. Let me know what you think about it and which one you like. More info please contact me: mark.knol [-at-] gmail.com.