Generative art is produced in a similar way to conventional art.
You start with an idea, and then first sketch out the basic implementation of the idea as a simple sketch, which may be elaborated in place, or by starting anew in a number of versions until the final desired effect is achieved.
Hence, when working with the Processing system, each experiment or trial is also known as a sketch. A collection of sketches is a Sketchbook. We will use the term specifically to mean the collection of sketches relating to the development of a particular idea over a number of experiments.
Each of the topics below is covered in more detail in its own page. Here, the intention is just to give an overview of different approaches that I have employed.
Circular Motion
The first Sketchbook that we look at is "Circular Motion" or "Epicycles" - some of you may remember the child's "Spirograph" toy which also produces attractive traces using epicycles. With Processing, however, we can go much further than a mechanical toy, and produce much more complex and visually interesting diagrams.
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Many of my early explorations with Processing are based on tracing a smooth curve, and then drawing repeated motifs around the curve. The "Circular Motion" series, based on superimposed epicycles constrains the basic curve to have a certain degree of symmetry.
Lissajous Curves
Lissajous curves though mathematically related, have more potential variations of form - mathematicians would say "a larger parameter space". In the case of epicyclic curves, for every cosine of a particular frequency using the calculation of the "x" coordinate of a point on a traced curve, there is a sine contribution of the same frequency and amplitude in the calculation of the "y" coordinate. When tracing a Lissajous curve we do not insist on this type of exact pairing - though it is often to the case that we will look at cases where the ratios of the frequencies used to control the x and y coordinate values on the traced curve will have a simple relationship to each other - such as 3:4 or 5:7 and so on.
The "Waves" series explores various simple forms of the basic Lissajous curve, drawing repeated motifs at each point on the traced curve, which motif is itself also based on a wave form. The form is simpler earlier in the series, and become more complex later.
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Although in this series I have chose only to exploit a wave motif it would be interesting to explore the use of other motifs in combination with these curves.
Chaotic Motions
The explorations of Lissajous Curves - drawing wave motifs emerging from an underlying trace based on regular oscillations in horizontal and vertical directions - suggested that it might be interesting to use a trace based on Chaotic Dynamics, that is a deterministic (i.e. exactly repeatable) evolution that is nevertheless highly sensitive to initial conditions and never repeats. While the outcomes appear distinctly less well ordered there are also patterns of change because the motions are constrained by analogies with physical laws.
The image set below uses exactly the same chaotic evolution algorithm as those above, but with some additional variation of the motifs used at each point on the traced curve.
There are more images in this Gallery page
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