Generative Art (with Processing) Book Review

I gave this review of a Generative Art book (with Processing) to the Boston Artist & Coders group on Sept 7, 2011 in Boston. There were approximately 40 creatives attending this particular event.

USER GROUP: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Artists-Plus-Coders/

Transcript

2. ME @scottjanousek www.scottjanousek.com Analog and Digital Artisan Creative Technologist Innovation Architect at Isobar
3. (Source: wikipedia.org)
4. BOOK REVIEW by Scott Janousek | Wed. Sept 7, 2011 | Boston, MA
5. THE BOOK
6. DATE OF RELEASE JUNE 28, 2011
9. “Matt Pearson is a creative coder and sometime writer. A perpetual freelancer, he has donned his coding gloves for clients such as London’s National Portrait Gallery, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Perth Arts Festival, the BBC, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Vancouver Museum of Anthropology, Paramount Pictures, and the UK Government.” www.zenbullets.com THE AUTHOR
10. @ZENBULLETS
11. ZENBULLETS.COM/BOOK.PHP
12. “Artists have always explored new media, and computer-based artists are no exception. Generative art, an emerging technique where print or onscreen images are created by use of computer algorithms, finds the artistic intersection between programming, computer graphics, and individual expression. Generative Art presents both the technique and the beauty of algorithmic art. In it, you'll find dozens of high-quality examples of generative art, along with the specific programmatic steps author and artist Matt Pearson followed to create each unique piece. The book includes concise tutorials for each of the technical components required to create the book's examples, and it offers countless suggestions for how you can combine and reuse the various techniques to create your own works. • Introduction to the principles of algorithmic art • Brief Processing language tutorial • Establishing artistic "ground rules" for a new work • Using random, semi-random, emergent and fractal processes • Finding fresh approaches to the discipline of programming • 32-page full-color section of beautiful artwork” SYNOPSIS
13. TOPICS COVERED Perlin Noise Randomness Fractals Emergence Agent Oriented Programming 3-D Drawing Cellular Automata ... and More!
14. Part 1 CREATING CODING Part 2 RANDOMNESS & NOISE Part 3 COMPLEXITY Introduction The organic vs. the mechanical BOOK STRUCTURE
15. YAY! FREE DOWNLOADS! Intro Chapter 1 Chapter 6 Source Code http://www.manning.com/pearson/
16. PROCESSING
18. “SKARSKY & HUTCH” aka (LEFT) Casey Reas and (RIGHT) Ben Fry - The Co-creators of Processing
19. FUN FACTS Paradigm(s) object-oriented Appeared in 2001; 9 years ago Stable release 1.5.1 (May 15, 2011; 3 months ago) Typing discipline strong Influenced by Design By Numbers, Java, OpenGL, PostScript, C OS Cross-platform License GPL, LGPL Usual filename extensions .pde Website processing.org
20. PROCESSING IDE
21. void setup() { // define the window size & enable anti-aliasing size(200, 200); smooth(); // Set "ink" color, font, and alignment for rendering text. fill(0); // Black // setup the font (system default sans serif) textFont(createFont("SansSerif",18)); textAlign(CENTER); noLoop(); // draw() executes only once } void draw() { // Draw text to screen using the previously set font. text("Hello World!", width/2, height/2); } HELLO WORLD .PDE
22. http://vimeo.com/28117873 BRAND SPANKING NEW!
23. SOME OF MY EXPERIMENTS
41. SUMMARY
42. PROS & CONS PROS Short Read Well Written Open Sourced Materials Good Concept Examples CONS Feels like it is not complete? More chapters?
43. MY RATING “One of the best intro books on Processing and Gen Art I’ve picked up recently. A nice concise read as well.” - Scott Janousek
44. WHERE TO PICK IT UP?
45. 38% DISCOUNT FOR ARTISTS + CODERS! http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Artists-Plus-Coders/sponsors/
46. THANKS! @SCOTTJANOUSEK