Generative art using C++ printer commands and a receipt printer | Hacker News Reader

Generative art using C++ printer commands and a receipt printer

twitter.com

148 pointsDanBC31 comments

I'm a huge fan of this. There's something magical about receipt printers. I love the idea that there is a long, infinite canvas which can flow from the printer. And part of the allure is the clunky slowness of the printer and the rough analog quality of the print. That rendering of the mountains works very well for the medium!

Sorry for the self promo, this is just too relevant not to share: I created a generative art piece using receipt printers in which the printers "print themselves to death" over a tub of water. Video here: https://vimeo.com/336939272

> the clunky slowness of the printer

I understand what you mean, but e.g. Toshiba TCx thermal receipt printer (6145-1TN) prints 406mm/sec (125 lps at 8lpi). I think that is very very fast.

Wow, good point! I suppose the thermal printers that I've hacked around with are probably very dated in comparison.

Neat! It lasted way longer under water than I would've expected it to.

> Video is not rated. Log in to watch.

I don't have a vimeo account; is there a mirror on a site that doesn't require an account?

Maybe it's my adblockers but I was able to see it directly.

Nice idea, reminds me of the aliens from Half Life somehow.

Strange. I'm able to view the video in an incognito window.

"existence is pain!" That printer, probably

I'd recommend gloves to anybody who's going to handle thermal paper receipts more than casually: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/turning-heat-therma...

OP seems to have used phenol-free paper.

https://twitter.com/flockaroo/status/1527603279907127296

Looks nice, but is there more to this than the one shaky video of the printer?

Not yet, I don't think. His website has some interesting bits: https://www.flockaroo.at/

Sometimes I post stuff to HN because I'm interested in how people here react to it - sometimes they've done something similar, sometimes they'll wonder how it's done and come up with a rough outline of an approach that's worth looking at.

Thanks!

He'd better stop that thing, it's almost as big as a CVS receipt.

Reminds me of Jackson Pollock.

For when you weren't satisfied only wasting electricity with your graphics hacks...

This is gonna get a hell of a lot of pushback from the HN crowd

Generative something. Not sure about the art part.

Art is beautiful, timeless and has something to say.

I’d argue all 3 criteria have been met (though, to be clear, I also don’t agree with your definition either):

- beauty is in the eye of the beholder

- this has been enshrined both in paper and digitally on the internet. That’s far more resilient than most peoples personal backups.

- and it’s generated discourse. From you in fact.

Duchamp’s Urinal pops to mind. It had something to say, at least about your point of view.

That tells a lot about your mind.

I think art like Urinal is dumb, but I wouldn't say it's not art. Trying to define "real art" is a fools' errand. It's "I know it when I see it" that doesn't achieve anything. There's plenty of art that isn't beautiful or timeless that pretty much nobody other than a contrarian would claim isn't art. Having nothing to say is saying something. The only thing that even comes close to defining art is somebody presenting the artwork as such, and you can probably find plenty of counterexamples to that. Avoiding saying that some piece of art lacks value/impact by claiming it's not art is a lazy way people try to avoid others pointing out that their assessment of that art's value/impact may be wrong, and that their gripes with the work are pretty much purely subjective.

That comment says volumes about yours.

Hmm, I’m pretty sure the most general definition of art is exactly the opposite: subjective, immediate, and representing a private communication between the artist and their context/environment.

If anyone external to that communication gets some value from it as well, that’s a nice side benefit!

I don't know about the immediate part. Some works of art I saw didn't trigger anything, until I realized the next day that I kept thinking about them (films or contemporary art usually). It also seems like these specific works tend to have had a more profound effect on me than the immediate ones.

In the end, they maybe triggered some kind of immediate subconscious reaction, but the actual communication was delayed.

Still, I like your definition very much.

IMO, art may have those characteristics - good art will often obviously have >1 of those.

Art in its most basic form is anything that engages you beyond a strictly functional level.

Gotta disagree on the beatuful and timeless parts of the definion.

Lots of art is ugly, or makes us face our own ugliness, and I would argue the best art causes some kind of emotional reaction be it calmness, peace, rage or disgust, often that looks messy and not beautiful.

As for timeless, most art exists as a critique of something, so it exists within the context and time that it was created. As the world changes some critiques are no longer relevant (if I made a piece decrying the ottoman empire, it may have been influential a long time ago, likely wouldn't matter today).

I think the difference between an Artist and a Craftsman is similar to the difference between a Scientist and an Engineer. Artist/Scientists are expiramental and pushing boundaries, Craftsman/Engineers use tried and true solutions to make something better in a repeatable way. Liking a piece because of technical talent is closer to craftsmanship than art.

Ironically the more timeless and beautiful it is the less likely it is to have something to say.

That's a needlessly rigid, and depressingly simple definition. Art is just the thing that people refer to when they use the word "art".

Fine art, commercial art, pop art ... the concept of art can take on many guises.

I suppose the history of art has been nothing if not people asking what can be called art — your comment contributes to that ongoing dialog.

To you I would suggest maybe there is "hard" art and "soft" art (the latter allowing for architecture, design, etc.).

This one is on the softer side.

For me it is beautiful.

For you it might not be. That's why art is subjective.

... according to your own subjective tastes...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com