Generative Design
From Maze
[NOTE: Following up on the note from yesterday, as I'm writing for the Random section, I feel like this section is no longer necessary. 25 March 2011, Casey] [NOTE: This section was conceived in summer 2010 and the text and outline is now very out of date. To my knowledge the sections "Alternate C64 Designs" and "Beyond the C64" are covered elsewhere in the book. I'll gut this text before starting on it again, but I'm leaving it as is for now. 24 March 2011, Casey]
One of the most striking aspects of the maze program is its continuous generation. The maze is constructed one tile at a time and builds until the program is stopped. With the calculation of which line to draw, left or right, an unpredictable maze unfolds from one of the near-infinite possible variations. While this variation and unpredictability is possible without software, the precision and speed of computing machines lead to new design possibilities. The 10 Print software is a concise, minimal example of this potential.
The potential of digital computers to generate images was first explored in the 1960s by researchers around the world, most publicly in England, Germany, the United States, and Japan. The Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London was the most public and best documented exhibition to catalog this early exploration. The primary theme of the exhibition was the computer as a creative tool; it covered innovations created by artists and engineers within the domains of music, poetry, sculpture, and visual art.
During the time leading up to Cybernetic Serendipity and for nearly a decade after, access to computers was limited to academic, commercial, and government research labs. The first people to create images with computers were technical researchers who saw a new potential for using these machines for visual ends and highly motivated artists who worked their way into labs and worked through the night while the lab staff was sleeping. For instance, the artist Manfred Mohr was able to gain access to a plotter at the Meteorological Institute in Paris, a restricted military zone, by obtaining a special permit from the French Ministry of Transport [1].
These early computer graphics explorations ranged from pragmatic to the aesthetic. For instance, in 1964 at Boeing, William Fetter built models of human bodies to explore the ergonomics of new cockpit designs. At Bell Labs in 1963, Edward Zajac created an animation on film to simulate and better understand the orientation of simulated satellites as they orbited the earth. Toward the other end of the spectrum, Frieder Nake, a mathematician in Breman, Germany explored the pure visual potential of computers by using highly constrained random number sequences to determine the position of lines drawn by a mechanical plotter.
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Alternative C64 Designs
[Note: This section will be about modifying the characters in the C64 ASCII table to produce a different set of visual designs.]
The maze program is one of many related visual patterns possible with the C64 graphic characters. Modifying the range of random numbers added to a base value creates unique visual structures with a minimal change to the algorithm.
…
A more radical approach draws the characters in a new sequence, rather than one after another...
Beyond the C64
[Note: This section is about exploring the “design” of the program, outside of the C64 platform.]
The essence of the 10 Print program is making a selection between drawing a line from the upper-left to lower-right corner of a unit or from the lower-left to the upper-right, then drawing that line on screen to the right of the previous unit. When the current horizontal line is full, the next line moves to the left edge and starts a new line below the previous. When this core algorithm is removed from the 1982 limitations of the C64 and a CRT screen, more design possibilities emerge.
10 Print in the Wild
[Note: This section describes visually and conceptually related programs from the history of art and computer graphics.]
The history of art and computer graphics reveals a few similar explorations that pre-date and are contemporary to the first known appearance of the 10 Print program on paper.
Frieder Nake's 1966 explorations titled “Walk Through Raster” has a strong resemblance to some of the C64 variations possible with alternative characters. The primary difference is Nake's changing density from the corners and edges. This could easily be simulated with a new, longer BASIC program, but it's not possible in one line of code.
[Insert “Walk Through Raster” Figures]
Vera Molnar's “Interruptions” series, is a less-literally related to 10 Print, but maintains the essence... [MORE]
Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #358 from 1981 has a striking similarity to 10 Print' by creating an arc to connect the corners, rather than a strait line. The decision to draw and arc also requires four shapes instead of two because arcs can be concave or convex. LeWitt defines this drawing as three sentences:
358. A 12" (30 cm) grid covering the wall. Within each 12" (30 cm) square, one arc from the corner. (The direction of the arcs and their placement are determined by the draftsman.)
This system is not possible to create using the standard C64 characters between these shapes aren't included, but is shows how a similar logical drawing structure...
[Insert “Wall Drawing #358” Figure]
