Data visualization is powerful because it can change the way you see an issue. A simple visualization can reframe a question in a way that numbers in a table can’t. A good visualization communicates more quickly, effectively, and looks pretty too. Even though data visualization is interesting, randomness and noise seem more interesting (at least […]
There’s a strong relationship between how we act, think, and perceive the world. The past few weeks I’ve been thinking about the difference between practitioners and theorists. Note: The idea of practitioners and theorists isn’t some proven thing. This is just Dan making up theories that seem reasonable enough. The definition of a practitioner is […]
Do you ever think about how the things you saw and experienced growing up shape the way you see the world today? I grew up surrounded by different types of art and one of the significant pieces was a large metal sun. The sun is around 4 feet across and made with some type of […]
I’ve never been particularly interested in drawing pictures of real things. For whatever reason, attempting to mirror reality feels stifling and stressful. I prefer Abstract Art because it evolves organically and provides a way to see things differently. Abstract art frequently develops without a specific destination. You might start of with a direction, idea, or […]
Generative art is frequently an iterative process. I might start out with an idea of where I’m going, but that idea acts more as a direction than a destination. Moving in some direction leads to unexpected outcomes. It’s easy to develop a number of different ideas on the way to arriving at the original one. […]
One of the more interesting aspects of generative art is creating and managing randomness. We tend to have an intuitive understanding of randomness, but magnitude and type impact the nature of it. The parallels with life are notable . . . The computer is a simple thing and when you ask it to generate a […]
This week we’ll continue the historical look back at early Generative Art. 10 Print is a well known example of generative art that was first produced in 1982. It was created with a single line of BASIC code and simply displays back and forward slashes like \ or / in a random order. As the […]
Since we’re moving through a series, we’ll start at the beginning. Starting a new activity causes us to look around. We look at who has done it before, who’s doing it now, and we find ideas and inspiration to influence our own creative work. Austin Kleon would call it stealing and he talks about the […]
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about what it means to ship. Shipping is the practice of showing up on a regular basis and doing something. Even though time is arbitrary, we tend to anchor production in time. If you do some reading online, you’ll find a range of recommendations on what (arbitrary) […]
It’s hard to make decisions. Making a decision to do one thing seems like it closes the door on something else. For anyone with a long list of ideas, closing the door is scary. Even though we want to push forward in some direction, we don’t want to say no. What if the notion that […]