Categories
Generative Art

Flood Fill

The algorithm that draw-something uses to outline object skeletons is basically a wall-following pathfinding algorithm such as a simple maze-running robot might use. I didn’t just use an algorithm “off the shelf”, I painstakingly developed one myself. For draw-something’s painting algorithm I’m definitely getting something off the shelf. I’m looking at adapting a stack-based flood-filling algorithm to fill the outlining algorithm’s lines with colour. Hopefully I can get something that looks similar to how I colour images without re-inventing the wheel.

AARON’s painting algorithm (from the screensaver) looks like a modified flood-fill, only with various constraints appropriate to physical paint. Maybe I will imitate this later, but for now I just want to get something colouring on-screen.

Categories
Generative Art

Moment Of Algorithmic Art Nerdishness

Up came the channel ident on the television. A hand-drawn looking line snaked around the channel logo at the top right corner of the screen.

“My algorithm does that!” I exclaimed. Then caught myself. 🙂

Categories
Free Culture

Remix Reading Launch Party

Be there or be square. Due to my current situation I’m going to have to be square. 🙁 But they’re showing some of my work, apparently. 🙂

http://wiki.remixreading.org/index.php/LaunchEvent
http://www.remixreading.org/node/300

Categories
Generative Art

Harold Cohen Article At The Franz Lisp Site

http://www.franz.com/success/customer_apps/artificial_intelligence/kurzweil.lhtml

“Programming gives me the power to work on a higher level of abstraction than painting does, ” he [Cohen] emphasizes. “It’s as if I work on the level of the platonic ideal, while the paintings the program generates are the earthly instantiation of that idea.

That is definitely something that appeals to me about programming art, the fact that you are working with instantiable abstractions. Many artists produce series of works around the same idea, using code to produce work formalises and allows greater control over doing so.

Categories
Free Culture

CNUK Restore

CNUK had a server crash.

I’ve restored my page there.

And I’ve added some comments on the CNUK social contract.

Categories
Personal

Quick Check

This is just a quick check to see whether Elaine is *really* reading this site. ;-P

Categories
Generative Art

Art Computing

Kazushi Mukaiyama’s course is called “Art Computing”, so it’s not a term I’ve created. 🙂

Categories
Reviews

Airport Extreme Card

I got a wireless card for my iBook. It’s easy enough to fit, but routing the net connection through the machine that is connected to the net took some fiddling with the firewall, and too many passwords. This isn’t the card’s fault, it’s MacOSX’s connection sharing software, but the combination could be easier to set up.

I’m posting this now using the connection, so it can be made to work. But it’s not the simple user experience I expect from Apple.

Categories
Reviews

Bloc Party: Silent Alarm

Songs to listen to after the end of a ten-year relationship should probably go something like:

“It’s so cold in this house… Like drinking poison, like eating glass.”

So ‘Silent Alarm’ by Bloc Party is ideal for me just now. There’s a good measure of dark and acutely observed songs on the album. But there’s beauty as well, as in the current single “So Here We Are”. It’s a good range, musically as well as emotionally. I’ve no idea who Gang Of Four are, so Bloc Party sound like the Cure, The Police, New Order, and other late 1970s/ early 1980s influences that I can’t quite place. Which isn’t to say that this is pastiche, it isn’t, it’s poetic lyrics and driven music that works very well and sounds fresh and young. In some places it sounds a little too young, as if Bloc Party haven’t been to Hamburg yet, but that just means that they have more potential for the future.

Recommended.

Categories
Personal

I’m Blogging This

So it’s coming up to 10am and the removal men have almost packed everything that’s going. Evie’s over at her new house with the Nag Champa that I bought her. Helping her move out has been like digging my own grave, only without the promise of any respite at the end. But at least I have been as good as my word. I don’t really have anything else I can be.