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On Algorithmic Thinking, Art Education, and Re- Coding Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, Volume 9, No. 3 – Special Issue: xCoAx 2017 Think the Image, Don't Make It! On Algorithmic Thinking, Art Education, and Re- Coding Frieder Nake Susan Grabowski Informatik, University of Bremen, Informatik, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany Bremen, Germany ----- ----- [email protected] [email protected] ----- ----- ABSTRACT 1 | INTRODUCTION: A FIRST EXAMPLE [1] In conceptual art, the idea is not only starting point Without any initial ado, let us immediately engage in and motivation for the material work, it is often a little experiment. Take a look at the drawing in considered the work itself. In algorithmic art, thinking Figure 1. Imagine you were given the task of finding the process of generating the image as one instance out how it was made. You are told that the drawing of an entire class of images becomes the decisive was done by a drawing machine controlled in its kernel of the creative work. This is so because the movements by a computer program. You are generative algorithm is the innovative component of requested to come up with such a program that is the artist's work. We demonstrate this by critically capable of generating drawings of the same kind or looking at attempts to re-construct works of early style. Your code is not required to generate exactly computer art by the re-coding movement. Thinking the drawing you see in the figure. But there should be images is not the same as thinking of images. For little doubt that your program, if allowed to keep on thinking images is the act of preparing precise generating such drawings, one after the other, would descriptions that control the machinic materialization some day produce almost exactly the given drawing. of images. This kind of activity is a case of algorithmic How would you approach this challenge? thinking which, in turn, has become an important general aspect of current society. Art education may In all likelihood, after a moment of pondering, you play an important role in establishing concrete would say that there are only horizontal and vertical connections between open artistic and more confined line segments.You observe that, at the far left and technological ways of thinking when thinking pro- high up, a line is starting. You follow it down until it gresses algorithmically. curves to the right in a right angle. You will probably find it hard to follow the line much further since you KEYWORDS lose track of it. But you see other cases of sequences of consecutive line segments that may produce in Surface; subface; algorithmic sign; algorithmic your mind the hypothesis that there are straight line- thinking; re-coding; Processing; generative art; art segments alternating between horizontal and vertical education. direction, going left or right, and up or down. The hypothesis would be a bit daring to claim that you ARTICLE INFO really see one line only starting at top left, and Received: 18 December 2017 continuing by taking turns between horizontal and Accepted: 19 December 2017 vertical lines. You don't see where, in the drawing, Published: 22 December 2017 this game is ending. https://dx.doi.org/10.7559/citarj.v9i3.458 CITARJ 21 This is an algorithmic description of a line drawing characterized by the following features: The drawing is made up of one polygon whose edges alternate between horizontal and vertical direction. Edges are of random length and they stay within the given format of the image (whose left and right boundaries within a given coordinate system go from the x-coordinate "left" to "right"; in the vertical direction they extend from "up" to down"). Whether the edge goes left or right (and, correspondingly, up or down), is decided randomly. The polygon has countMax edges. It should be noted that the x- coordinate runs from left to right whereas the direction of y is from top to bottom. Even though the description may appear a bit cryptic, it should be understood quite easily. We understand the individual lines of this description if we know precisely what must be done to generate the drawing. We may not yet know what must be done in order to make sense of the several appearances of the words "randomly choose ...". This part is still open and must be described before we accept the above as an algorithmic description. The symbol ":=" stands for Figure 1 | Georg Nees: Irrweg 1965. Credit: G. Nees [2]. the operation "the variable on the left of ':=' takes on You feel ready to sit down and write code in a rather the value that the expression to the right of ':=' free symbolic form that you find easy to read. It may evaluates to". This symbol is called the assignment in a pseudo-code look like the following. operator. Its function is to assign a new value to a variable. input countMax; randomly choose a point inside the space provided for the image and call it "P0"; Algorithms are descriptions of calculations, and such randomly choose a first direction from the two options {vert, hor} and call it "dir"; count := 0; calculations are organized in sequences of discrete steps of simpler calculations. Each calculatory step repeat the following until count > countMax: changes in a precise and unambiguous way the state { of at least one of the variables of the algorithm. randomly choose an orientation from the two options {'+', '-'} and call it "or"; randomly choose a length for the next line segment and call it "len"; Ultimately, assignment operations are responsible for such state changes. Therefore, the assignment is the if (dir = hor) do most basic in all algorithmic descriptions. { if (or = '+') do { P1.x := P0.x + len; if (P1.x > right) do { P1.x := right } } Our example is an algorithmic description because it else do is of finite length, it is unambiguous, and it is effective. { P1.x := P0.x - len; if (P1.x < left) do { P1.x := left} } P1.y := P0.y } A few conventions must be added to make the else do description unambiguous and effective. The property {if (or = '+') do of being effective means that in each case of { P1.y := P0.y + len; if (P1.y > down) do { P1.y := down} } interpreting the individual statements that constitute else do { P1.y := P0.y - len; if (P1.y < up) do { P1.y := up} } P1.x := P0.x }; the description, the interpretation must end in draw line-segment from P0 to P1; operations whose meaning is already known in each P0 := P1 in coordinates; and every detail. In the end, a machine must be if (dir = vert) do { dir := hor } else do { dir := vert }; available that can carry out the description. count := count + 1; } To many of our readers this exercise may be pretty boring and trivial. We have started the exercise from CITARJ 22 Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts, Volume 9, No. 3 – Special Issue: xCoAx 2017 one of the first examples of generative art (often concerned with in sketching, experimenting, called "computer art"), i.e. from a given visual object. modelling, trying, repeating, revising, versioning, in This object is trivial enough so that we could easily short, with conceptualizing the work of their concern. suggest simple operations of which we are intuitively With exception of a few cases, an artist is concerned certain that, if carried out truthfully following the with taking practical steps to get closer to realizing his description and nothing else, they are capable of intuition, his imagination, her intention, her fantasies, generating drawings of the kind displayed in Figure 1. etc. When in conceptual art the concept itself was Even more: We claim that our description is capable pushed up to the primary concern of an artist, this was of generating all those drawings, their entire class. an interesting further step in deconstructing the work of art. Sol LeWitt, in 1967, gave the formula: "The idea This is a most important aspect of algorithmic art. This becomes a machine that makes the art." (LeWitt, kind of artistic activity is interested in classes of 1967) images, i.e. in infinite sets of images! The individual image is reduced to an instance only of the class it We do not know whether LeWitt was aware of the fact belongs to. We may like or dislike one or the other of that two years earlier the first exhibitions had been the productions resulting from executing an image shown of art that came out of the machine (Georg generating algorithm. That's nice and justified but – Nees, A. Michael Noll, Frieder Nake). If not, someone we are inclined to say – it is no longer at the center of should have written to him: you are right, and it is the aesthetics of this kind of art. happening already! But such detail is not important nor interesting. In historic perspective, it is all the We don't want to be misunderstood: Like you, we same. The idea of thinking the image emerges at have our taste, and prefer some image over another different places. At some places only as a nice, one. Such emotional or otherways founded surprising phrase, at others in actual artistic practice. judgements are okay and will stay with us. Our point, Thinking the image, however, in a radicalized form, however, is the shift from the individual and isolated becomes necessary in algorithmic art. Developing an image to the infinitely many images. With algorithmic algorithm for the production of just one image would art, a new relation between us, the appreciators, and be stupid and crazy.
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