Genuary 2022: Generative Code Art Prompts for a Month | Hacker News Reader

Genuary 2022: Generative Code Art Prompts for a Month

genuary.art

I was not aware of Genuary, but I have been a fan of Jamuary [0] so I took to using their prompts for some generative art the past few days.

Rather than sticking to one or two of the prompts, I have been mixing together 3 at a time like "sequenced melody of a major+minor connected with white noise."

I really enjoy the results.[1]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/rssia1/jamuar... [1]https://imgur.com/a/gVlzlUG

Wasn't aware of either! But very excited by both.

Those images are really great! Can you share some details on your process and tools?

I always wanted to start with generative art and this seems like a perfect starting place.

Question for people that already do generative art: what library (framework) do you recommend? I know a little bit about GLSL but I know it is limiting in some cases

If you'd rather do visual programming than code, blender is a great choice. You can do generative 2D using the shader node editor, or 3D with the new geometry nodes.

For a code-based approach, I spent the weekend trying different permutations of Processing and settled on writing p5.js in VSCode. It's easy to set up, you can use vim bindings, and you can copy+paste your code into openprocessing.org if you want to share it (if it's interactive, for example).

p5 is great! Very easy to learn and has an amazing online editor to get you started immediately. Such a good tool for prototyping ideas quickly.

https://editor.p5js.org/

I second p5js. Try Dan Shifman's "The Coding Train" videos on youtube.

I third recommend p5js. If you're looking for more different flavors, try the Awesome Creative Coding page on github to get your bearings.

- https://github.com/terkelg/awesome-creative-coding

If Rust's your language, I wrote a library that should be pretty good at 2D things: https://github.com/logicalshift/flo_draw - I wrote it while working on another project (FlowBetween) where I found debugging would be easier if I could just render something on-screen but rendering stuff on screen always required a ridiculous amount of setup.

It has some nice options for feeding its own output back into itself as it uses streams rather than callbacks so it's quite good for procedural rendering type tasks (the 'Wibble' example is a good place to start with that)

I intend to use the prompts to learn python scripting in blender. Geometry nodes are great and I love the instant feedback, but for anything requiring iteration or recursion it can be quite cumbersome as there is no loop node yet.

Alex Martinelli does some really cool stuff with cellular automata and I'd love to be able to get similar results in blender.

https://twitter.com/5agado/status/1476121617415745536

Can you write geometry nodes in Python? I've found that "nodes plus an escape hatch to real code" is a nice balance.

Do you mean can you add your own nodes? You can but you have to do it in the core code which is C++.

An addon that existed before geo nodes and did similar things, animation nodes, does actually let you write free-form python in the node tree since it was written as an addon. It is very slow compared to geometry nodes though, especially when dealing with lots of objects.

> Do you mean can you add your own nodes? You can but you have to do it in the core code which is C++.

Ouch. I really hope that changes.

> An addon that existed before geo nodes and did similar things, animation nodes, does actually let you write free-form python in the node tree since it was written as an addon. It is very slow compared to geometry nodes though, especially when dealing with lots of objects.

I would like a situation where I can choose to trade speed for easy customization without switching to an entirely different system. I really hope they add scriptable geometry nodes. I just know for a fact that a node system without an escape hatch will be too limiting (and writing C++ is less than ideal and not viable at all if it requires a full recompilation of the app)

Does anyone know any good resources to learn generative art? Would love to learn some algorithms and try mashing them together

This book and YouTube channel, both by Daniel Shiffman, are really excellent resources.

https://natureofcode.com/book/ https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCodingTrain

In my opinion the best starter book is Generative Design, hands down. If there was a generative art 101 textbook, this would be it.

https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Design-Visualize-Program-J...

Did you know that Satoshi is not who he was purported to be? An answer is coming... Oh and be careful with these books. They're using barcodes to track us.

Gonna use this opportunity to show off my day 1 prompt (10,000 things) creation. I'm not quite satisfied with it, but also don't really know where to go from here. https://i.imgur.com/8LN0q6V.png

How refreshing to see a mention of generative art that isn't followed by the mention of "NFTs". It's really spoiled one of my passions and I've had to mute a bunch of people i used to follow on Twitter.

I'm not especially zealous against NFTs (more bored than I am repulsed) but it's just unspeakable boring for an entire field to turn into a sales pitch.

I know. It's a nightmare. Several people I used to admire in the space have succumbed to the NFT virus. All they do now is shill for their latest 'drops'.

The demo scene this is not anymore. It used to be about fun, experimentation and showing off mad coding (and lately ml) skills. Now it's a pyramid scheme. I'm unsubscribing.

Or maybe I'm just getting old

Note that a number of the artists providing the prompts here are doing NFTs (and great ones too).

I've got no objection to artists doing NFTs. I just want places I can engage with their work and not have a constant reminder that it's a commercial transaction. It's just off putting when every single tweet about generative art is accompanyed by a loud sales pitch. It's like turning a gallery into a street market.

It's really amazing that if you search for generative music on Twitter you find mostly NFT projects/people:

https://twitter.com/search?q=generative+music&src=typed_quer...

(But if you search for stochastic music you find almost nothing).

I generally am not fond of NFTs myself, but want to give a counter point - while it's no fun to see artists you like posting a lot about NFTs, it's also great they can now get paid to do art. For established artists this means high purchase prices that (in the thousands, not something crazy) that make being a full time artist viable and acts as pay off for doing it for many years without much of a financial incentive. For smaller artists, it makes focusing on art as a source of income more viable. Personally i've bought some NFTs on hitenunc and was glad to support artists whose work I liked. Sure, buying some prints or something would be nicer, but that's not easy to set up, and the margins on that are presumably low.

I somehow doubt that NFTs provide a sustainable way of increasing the amount of money spent on art. If an artist couldn't make it by selling prints or collecting donations in the past, why would people now suddenly spent more money on that artist's art just because instead of a print you get an NFT?

I think more people will buy into an unknown artist’s NFT collection as a speculative investment than will buy their prints for the same reason. There is an established secondary market for NFTs in a way that there isn’t really for prints by unknown artists. Digital goods are always easier to buy than physical ones. Also NFTs do have an advantage for the artist that they can guarantee themselves a portion of future resale value.

I’m not entirely convinced it’s sustainable either, but I can absolutely see why right now some artists are able to make massively more from NFTs than they could from prints.

It may not be sustainable long term, but as it's currently a fad it's a nice way to kick start some income. NFTs also have the benefit of being browsable on sites like hitenunc, so instead of finding the artist on Instagram or Twitter you can come across them on such a site. Lastly, personally for small artists I think of it as a way to send a little money their way, like a PayPal donation or Patreon (i'm a big user of the latter) but by expressing my appreciation for particular peices of art. If they appreciate in value, that's cool too.

PS I'm not exactly rich as a grad student, so I've just spent about $100 so far. No idea if any of what I bought can be re sold, maybe I'll look sometime.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. The thing is, when folks typically buy art it's either because they connect with the artist, the piece, or the time and place. This doesn't happen very often, even for great artists. With NFTs, there are collectors that are looking at this stuff through a different lens. They are incentivized to collect for various reasons, usually because of the tie-in with investing, etc.

I'm a great example - I've been doing art for almost 20 years and have made a few hundred bucks here and there selling prints, paintings, having art shows, etc.

In 2021, I made about 2x what I make from my tech job selling NFTs. I consider myself lucky, but at the same time, there are thousands like me.

I too occasionally like money.

Is it possible to see NFTs without the levels of self-promotion I see on Twitter? I really couldn't bring myself to do that.

Yeah, I hear you, but I suppose it comes with the territory. You can try to curate your social media experience by not following/muting folks, but if you're into art I think you will have a hard time avoiding NFTs. I've noticed some art communities are completely defiant, cartoonists in particular.

> Is it possible to see NFTs without the levels of self-promotion I see on Twitter? I really couldn't bring myself to do that.

They're tied together. You need to start thinking of yourself as an NFT influencer, rather than an artist.

Sadly then it's not for me.

Cryptokitties explored this, and I suppose the answer is that eventually the market evaporates.

The irony is that this is the top comment, so it is in fact a mention of generative art followed by the mention of NFTs.

> How refreshing to see a mention of generative art that isn't followed by the mention of "NFTs".

Well, thanks for kicking things off for us!

I for one think it’s a very interesting time for generative art sparked by NFTs. People that I’m following since Macromedia Flash for their digital experiments are suddenly creating NFTs. In the process everybody is motivated to improve their quality.

Yes, there are some annoying effects as well, the shilling and hyper speculation. But overall I’ve seen an amazing output of interesting works last year. Some of the recent works of Genuary that I’m seeing are really interesting.

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