Originally posted on Substack
The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery -Francis Bacon
Hello Friends,
It’s been another couple weeks since the last edition has gone out. I’ve been spending time on my own artwork, gathering books and inspirations along with traveling and working on another project involving blockchains.
Hope you enjoy!
Chris Ried
📰 Happenings
- Eyeo Festival - June 14 - 17, 2022
- School of Poetic Computation - Multiple Courses
- Anderson Ranch Art Center - Multiple Classes
- Processing and Laser: Creative Code to Wood Panel - June 27 - July 1, 2022
- Drawing with Machines - July 18 - 22, 2022
📸 Generative
Meet Vera Monar, the 98-Year-Old Generative Art Pioneer Who Is Enjoying New Relevance at the Venice Bienniale
“For me, arriving in Paris was happiness,” Molnár told me of her emigration to the French capital in 1947 with François Molnar, who would become her husband. Recalling the rapture with which she first saw Notre-Dame, she said: “I had never seen such a grand thing before.” The encounter brought to life an impulse that had lain dormant during her classical training at the Budapest College of Fine Arts. That very same evening she produced a set of highly geometric drawings of the cathedral’s façade, marking a turning point. “I still didn’t know what I was looking for, but I’d eliminated what I was not looking for,” she said.
λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language, Featuring Ideas from Lambda Calculus
Though I’m normally an imperative and low-level person, I was compelled to use lambda calculus, or functional programming in its most primitive form, as the basis for the language, for it seemed to me that the ideas bear a lot of resemblance to a typical drawing. It has no concept of “execution” but only that of “evaluation”, much like how the viewers’ eyes can linger on any part of a drawing in no particular order, and by following many dots they see the line, and lines the form, and forms the composition.
I’ve been a fan of the work that Lingdong has put out for a while and its always exciting to see the new thing that he has done.
🚤 Interesting Maths
Elements of Euclid by Byrne in Color
The arts and sciences have become so extensive, that to facilitate their acquirement is of as much importance to extend their boundaries. Illustration, if it does not shorten the time of the study, will at least make it more agreeable.
This must have been a beautiful book at its printing in 1847. It’s more of a piece that is interesting way to rediscover Geometry with Bauhaus colors.
🔖 Articles and Tutorials
Simple Mesh Tessellation & Triangulation Tutorial
Tessellation and triangulation can mean complicated, fancy things to people who are mathematicians and computer scientists studying complicated, fancy things like computational geometry. BUT, I’m not one of those people, and I don’t think that the majority of people making games or dipping their toes into procedural geometry are! This post is focused on the visually pleasing application of these algorithms for procedural 3D geometry, and it is not focused on using all the correct scientific terminology. So, disclaimer, maybe don’t try to base your Stanford 3D graphics paper on this blog post. But DO use it to get better acquainted with procedural geometry, make cool shapes, and have fun!
Implementing cosine in C from scratch
Have you ever wondered how the math library in your favorite programming language implements trigonometric functions, like cosine? It is such a common function that you can find in any and every math library so it must be fairly straight forward, right? Oh no. It most definitely is not.
Its a bit more of a technical article but nonetheless interesting on the exact methodologies that Cosine has been coded in C
Self Generative Music
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Self-generative music is music that is generated by a system, a computer, using MIDI information. In today’s video, we are going to use Ableton Live midi devices to create an endless combination of melodic information that will be repeated to infinity, creating different chapters of music one after another.The instrument I’m going to use for this demonstration is all by Spitfire Audio LABS, a free collection of around 40 plugins that have strong cinematic feels, guitar, piano, pads, cello, strings, and so on…..
I’m always a bit of a sucker for the beauty that can come with modular synths and something like these wonderful instrumentals. Its definitely a skill one has to learn to do properly but there is something beautiful about the ethereal textures.
🔨Tools
GLSL Textures for Blender
Create textures from GLSL fragment shaders on Blender 2.8+
📚Books
Anni and Josef Albers: Equal and Unequal
Josef - painter, designer, and teacher - and Anni Albers - textile artist and printmaker - are among the twentieth century’s most important abstract artists, and this is the first monograph to celebrate the rich creative output and beguiling relationship of these two masters in one elegant volume. It presents their life and work as never before, from their formative years at the Bauhaus in Germany to their remarkable influence at Black Mountain College in the United States through their intensely productive period in Connecticut.
There is so much inspiration and beautiful history behind the relationship and artwork of Anni and Josef Albers. If you have the time to find a copy I’d definitely recommend taking an entire afternoon and really mulling over their work and contributions.