“If we can translate the language of computers to the language of the human eye, then art is about to get extremely interesting.”
As a business student and artist, the phrases “computer science” and “coding” meant nothing to me because I knew nothing about them. For someone who was utterly immersed in programmed systems, the lack of excitement was honestly a bit worrying.
However, nothing could match the excitement I felt when I first discovered Generative Recursion. A reduction step, trivial case, and some recursions later, a beautiful fractal blossomed on my screen. In an instant, I was hooked. I was ready to drop everything in order to learn more.
I started to explore more about generative art through the Instagram hashtag #GENERATIVEART. Artists like Refik Andol, Tyler Hobbs, and Zach Liberman inspired me with their diverse portfolios of new media work. I quickly surrounded myself with information about the subject. Data visualization, artificial intelligence, and art created with machine learning became topics I was constantly researching.
After two months of copious learning, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, and consuming copious amounts of content, I have effectively filled my brain with endless questions and ideas. Here are the ways that coding has changed the way I feel and think about art:
- Generative art is both in and out of the artist’s control; it is a collaboration between human and machine.
- Art doesn’t always require a meaning; create for the sole purpose of creating something new in the world, something that has never existed before.
- Art is unbounded in its possibility.
We live in the age of information. Information that is critical, powerful, and beautiful. Learning how to code not only helped me get over my artist’s block, it gave me, literally, infinite ways to generate new ideas in a tangible way.
If we can translate the language of computers to the language of the human eye, then art is about to get extremely interesting.
By Anova H.