My name is Samuel Falade, I am a graduate student at the department of Visualization at Texas A&M University. I will be using this page to document my journey through the Generative Art class (VIZA 626).

Project 1 - Paint Splash

For my first project, I am considering randomly splashing paints on a surface which could be a canvas, watercolor paper or an illustration board. Some of the splash mediums being considered are the use of a spinning top, hammer on a paint bulb and leaking a paint tube on a canvas and making random motion with the tube.

The spinning top will be spun on the surface while liquid acrylic paint will be carefully dropped on the spinning top, this is expected to distribute the paint randomly on the canvas. Three split complimentary colors will be chosen for this project using a 10 X 10 inch board. Split complimentary colors are considered to create harmony with the randomness that may occur.

I did explore the use of volume trails in Houdini, I thought that since the data I have

I was able to spin the top for about 3 - 4 minutes each time and the paint reduced the spin time further. I used a set of pour acrylic paints bought from Hobby Lobby on two 8 X 10 inch canvas as a test. I am hoping to make my final spin on an illustration board. I later interfaced the paints with regular acrylic paint on a cold pressed cardbord paper and the outcome was slightly different.

In the absence of an illustration board, I decided to experiment on a cold pressed paper that I got for another class last year, you can easily differentiate the regular acrylic paint trail from the pour acrylic paint trails. Below is the an image of the outcome of my third run.

The painting above was done on a 20 X 20 sized paper, cut into 4 and then framed. Final piece shown below.

Life systems

The task was to create a generative art using any life form as the basis of the art. I thought of experimentation using some form of live data to create art and I decided now is the time for me to try to find my way around Houdini. This choice of direction was primarily because as someone with an engineering degree, I have been considering the possibility of visualizing some form of data in a 3D space.

What do I mean? I want to recreate data in its real point in space, for example, we do not see the wind but we can feel it and there is data to show certain parameters of wind. How about seeing what these parameters would look like in a 3D space? One of the challenges is how to bring in the data and how I would represent the data or parameters. It is time for some Youtube.

I investigated the use of procedural methods in Houdini for generating some form. I started by using the volume trails in Houdini

I created a geometry node in Houdini and added the scatter nodes inside the geometry node, a curve node is also added to the geometry node and nurbs nodes are generated based on the curve node.

I continued playing with the iterations to create a better looking tree form. This led me to investigating the L-system in Houdini since all my iteration for the previous volume trail did not yield the kind of expectation that is pleasing to me. I did not get the kind of satisfaction that I would want to get from

I was still obsessed with seeing how I cam implement the forest fire data that I have so I explored a different approach to that I thought would be able to absorb the data that I have of the forest fire. Using the fractal flame algorithm which was an extension of Scott Draves' fractal flame algorithm but in the 3rd dimension. This is basically manipulating some complex vector components and adding a third dimension to all the points in the Scott Draves' algorithm, affline transformations and variation functions in the iterated function system (IFS).

A geometry node was created and the nodes that create the fractals were placed in the geometry node. The first node adds points to the project, two attribute wrangles were then created to hold the equations running behind the fractals with each wrangle data slightly different from the other. The entire node collection then goes into the transform node

Below is the image of what the flame looks like. The attributes assigned determines the color and the distribution of the particles the form the flame.

By changing the equation in the code, I can have an entirely new visualization as shown below,

Changing the number of seeds and the seed ration, the fractal flame transformed as shown below,

If I were display this work, it will be displayed using AR Technology or as a hologram. You would see the fractal body rotating around as you walk around the space.

Project III

For this project, it was difficult coming up with something that would meet the professor's criteria since I mostly experiment with whatever I could lay my hands on. I mostly want to figure out a way to bring my previous project to life using AR (Adobe or ARkit) and build on the previous work I did but I do not think this would give a satisfactory result and I do not have enough leeway for many experiments anymore (Previous experiments did not pan well).

Another idea is to create a stack of spin top paintings on acrylic glass, this is an idea that I am willing to pursue but maybe not for this class due to the cost of getting plexiglass that is thick enough to create the space I need between layers of paint. This will entail reproducing my first project on a bunch of acrylic surfaces and then fusing the surfaces together.

Another idea is to generate random shapes and colors and then create a sculpture based on these shapes and colors on a canvas. For this, I am considering using papercraft to create this 3D sculpture.

One last idea is to set a number of pinhole cameras in different places and let those record information. The time of exposure will range from a few hours to several days, these will then be scanned inverted and printed on a large.

I created a pinhole camera using a perfume box and carried it around for a whole day trying to expose it as much as I can. While driving it fell from the dashboard where I placed it, I was swinging around while I walked from place to place. When I got back home, I put the box outside to face the sky with the hope of picking it up the next day but I forgot it there and it ended up staying outside for a day and a half. Below is the recording from the pinhole camera

One of the challenges of this project was not knowing if there is any data recorded in the camera. The next set of pinhole camera setups had almost no data recorded on it save two lines so I thought to discard those after scanning. But for some reason, I forgot the paper face down on my desk at home (Face down because I did not want it interacting with light before scanning). While trying to get stuffs away from my daughter, I placed a perfume bottle on the photo paper which then remained on my table for about 4 days. I found my photo paper while cleaning up my table and more data had been recorded as seen below. The paper must have recorded other items that was placed on it during the time it remained on the table.

Above is the scan of the accidental capture described in the previous paragraph. My suspicion with the two bright lines is that one is the sun and the other is the moon. One lesson I learned from the failed recordings is that because of the time constraint, I should have made my hole larger than a pin-sized hole. My subsequent pinholes were then created using pencil holes (about 5mm).

Other things that were explored week after week was to explore using light to paint images on the photo paper without using a box. The plan was to capture several food items and create a type of sliced collage from the images. Unfortunately, I dropped that Idea early

After the opening the camera I placed in the car to see that there was no recording and improving on my design, I decided to try again and I hope that the next time I open the camera, there will be some interesting thing inside.

This next image is an experiment trying to see the effect of more than one hole on the camera, after all we have two eyes, one complimenting the other. I made two cameras, one with one hole and the other with two. The first set was placed outside for just under an hour.

The image to the left above is the recording from the Camera with one pin hole (this was a pin sized hole) left in my patio on a sunny morning while the image to the right is the capture from the double eyed pin hole(s) camera in the same time frame.

After almost 4 weeks of resisting the temptations of unveiling some of the pinhole cameras, I finally summoned the courage to open the camera I made with a beverage can. The camera was made by spray painting the can's interior with a matte black paint I got from Hobby Lobby, the lid wouldn't retain the paint so I had to cut cardboard to cover the can and then used the lid to hold it into place. The reason for painting the interior black is to prevent light scattering inside the can and to sort of retain a darkroom experience in the can. I then used black gorilla tape to fasten the can to a pole. There was a second camera made from a perfume box that was placed at the same location and exposed for approximately the same time, the perfume box was however placed to be facing the sky so as to capture the suns movement

The image from the beverage can when then processed by inverting in photoshop and then printed on a transparent film/paper.

Making a decision on how to display this image was a struggle, I wanted the image to have an intimate interaction with whoever wanted to see it so I decided it has to be a small print. the subtle edge blur has an old image feel that I wanted to retain so I decided to create a lightbox (Which I call a dream box) and backlight the image printed on a transparent photo paper.

I bought the acrylic glass from home deport and I bought the light from amazon. The printed image was sandwiched into two acrylic glasses and then placed on the wood containing the glass such that it was providing a backlight to the image. The glass was then placed on the two pieces of wood with LED light and taped, this provided support for the box. I covered the back with white light so as to improve the quality of light in the box

Summary of the project

Overall, I made 12 pinhole cameras. 11 of the pinhole cameras were made from boxes and one was made with a beverage tin. Some of the attempts yielded no result because I opened the boxes too early or the pinhole was not large enough.

Items used

Light sensitive photo paper bought on amazon

Perfume boxes, delivery boxes, face mask boxed

Gorilla tape, spray paint

Printer with scanner

Future work (05092022)

I intend to perfect my beverage tin camera (and if possible figure out how to use soda cans instead) and position a few cameras in strategic locations. I would want to see how I can capture.