Monday 9 October 2017

Computer generated art and coding

Tom Betts used to work out of Leeds but moved some time ago to Brighton. During his time here he was making drawings with interactive media, specialising in generative programming techniques and computer game modifications, in particular he had made a modification of the first person shooter game Quake. At the time an old cinema space was still available in the Merrion Centre and Tom took it over so that people could play his new art games using a specially erected console.  Tom had stripped the graphics down in such a way that when you played you were bringing across the screen abstract 3D shapes, reminiscent of both forms taken from abstract art and those taken from very crude pixelated computer gameplay.

Tom Betts

Computer generated art is sometimes forgotten about, but it is a growing and continually fascinating arena of practice that overlaps the world of systems art and gaming. Coding of course is a very important element within these types of practices.  
Frederick Hammersley was one of the first artists to see the potential of computer coding as a way of generating imagery, you can see the relationship between his work and other process led work here.

Frederick Hammersley: Computer generated image 1969

In England it was probably the work of Harold Cohen that first came to the public's attention. He used a program called AARON, which drove a robotic machine that could make large drawings on sheets of paper placed on the floor.  

Harold Cohen: 1982

I have briefly touched on these issues before, in particular read the notes on the work of Corneel Cannearts. The history of this type of work is something I must admit to not being fully cognisant of. However what I can do is offer a few pointers to those of you wanting to open out your own research into the area. The work of Nam June Paik was probably what first alerted me to the importance of the electronic manipulation of imagery. Paik with technical support, developed a video synthesizer that allowed him to mix and manipulate colours and shapes from different images. He stated at the time, "This will enable us to shape the TV screen canvas as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colourfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as violently as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns". (Edith Decker, Paik Video, S. 152.) Sometimes Paik's work can be too easily seen as simply to do with his appropriation of numerous TV sets and building them into towers or robot like sculptures. He was also deeply involved with how electronic media operated, was very interested in why electronic images were like they were, and was using theories taken from Marshall McLuhan's concept of 'the medium is the message', in order to justify his experiments. 

Artists such as John F. Simon Jr. have pointed out the similarities between concept-based and software-based art. "I see parallels between my work and works by those like Lawrence Weiner and Sol LeWitt at the end of the sixties," states Simon. "Their wall sketches especially were nothing more than a set of instructions…I believe that software and programming are a natural continuation of this concept because software is basically nothing more than a set of instructions… The ideas of some concept artists could be written as programs and could then be implemented by a computer. The art works would then simply produce themselves. Or, more simply: art does what it says. That’s the way I look at my programs." (Baumgärtel, 2001, p.103) Simon has also made the link between his work and LeWitt's in a much more direct way. See

John F. Simon Jr.: 'Combinations'

For those of you wanting to look at creative coding, I am told that 'Processing', and 'openFrameworks' an open source C++ toolkit are good places to begin. Raven Kwok is an Openprocessing user and he is worth looking at if you want to get an idea of much more contemporary work in this area. You can get an idea of Kwok and how he works from the clip below of Kwok introducing himself. 

Raven Kwok

Davidope is the pseudonym of animated GIF artist David Szakaly. Even someone as digitally challenged as myself has been able to make animated GIFs, so this area of working might be a place to start if you have never thought of making images for a computer screen before. Davidope has used GIFs to revisit concepts such as those investigated by Bridget Riley back in the 1960s. The issue about GIFs is that they take up very little computer memory and therefore they can be accessed on a wide range of devices; you also don't need to understand coding to begin making interesting things.

Davidope: Animated GIF

Florian Cramer has emphasised what has been called the 'defect paradigm' in many computer artist's interactions. This is probably due to the fact that artists are not necessarily good programers. He sees destruction or creative modification as the focus of works that specifically concentrate on using the graphic qualities of games as visual raw materials, such as Arcangel Constantini's "Atari Noise"

Arcangel Constantini's "Atari Noise"

Play Arcangel Constantini's "Atari Noise"

Although I understand the conceptual game being played in 'Atari Noise' and of course its relationship with mathematical variation and systems art, I personally much prefer Cory Arcangel's 'Super Mario Clouds'. Based on the Nintendo NES game; Cory Arcangel hacked the game and modified it so that all that remains of the game are the white clouds on a blue sky. Cory Arcangel had to open the cartridge, on which the game was stored, and replace the Nintendo graphics chip with a chip on which he had burned a program he had written himself. 


Cory Arcangel's 'Super Mario Clouds'

Cory Arcangel's work acknowledges the conventions of contemporary art installations and in stripping the images down to simply clouds, he creates an oblique link between the history of Modernist painting and the history of gaming. In effect performing a Greenbergian move within the conventions of computer generated art. For me this move was one that demonstrated that this area of work was now mainstream. 
Much more recently Larry Achiampong & David Blandy in 'Finding Fanon 2' which is available as a UHD video, have combined art-house cinema with machinima. It has been stated that, "their work investigates the post-colonial condition within the simulated world of Grand Theft Auto V. The result is a multi-layered narrative which raises questions about the alleged ideology-free spaces of video games". Metamakers Institute 

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy: Finding Fanon 2

The issue about Cory Arcangel or Larry Achiampong & David Blandy's work is that it is work that transcends the boundaries of computer game art, becoming simply 'art', the fact it is using computer game technologies is no longer the be all and end all issue for the work. Like Hito Stereyl they use technologies as part of the way they think about ideas. See Hito Stereyl playing with ideas associated with the technologies of video making. 

Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin: Listening Post

'Listening Post' was the first piece of computer assisted art that I thought worked as well as any other. Even though it was made way back in 2001 it still feels contemporary, therefore I would suggest it is the concept rather than the technology that carries the weight of the idea. 

See also:

The work of Rachel Ara is a good place to start if you are interested in a more feminist stance in relation to work in this field.

Machinima is not a game (an overview of contemporary practices)


Network Art: Practices and Positions edited by Tom Corby: See the chapter 'The Ludic Hack' in particular p.85 for some interesting comments on the relationship between Arcangel Constantini's "Atari Noise" and the work of Nam June Paik. 


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