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Ming + PHP5 + AI = Pretty

Posted by timothy on from the mind-the-drooling dept.

cyberscribe writes "Project K++ just released its first alpha version today. The project aims to explore computer-generated abstract art using PHP and Ming. The name of the project is an homage to Wassily Kandinsky, father of abstract art. Caution: the Flash movies can be intensive on your graphics card. Other caution: hitting reload to see the next cool computer-generated abstract 'painting' can be highly addictive."

61 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Nice warning. by General+Sherman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Other other caution: Hitting reload may cause the site to go down faster. Imagine that. Medic!

    --
    - Sherman
  2. Poor Abstract Artists by BlueCup · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like their careers are over =(

    --
    WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
    1. Re:Poor Abstract Artists by linzeal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Abstract was always the lowest common denominator. Look at some real Abstract Art and compare, the lowly generated stuff to me is no better than a winamp visualization. Sure it can pump out as much visual stimuli as you will allow but what does any of it mean? Abstraction of thought still requires recognition of said thought in the first place or it is mere bullshit or automated bullshit. The human element in art is far from gone, computer generated music and visual arts have always fallen short imho.

      --
      An Education is the Font of All Liberty
    2. Re:Poor Abstract Artists by pbhj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the impact of post-modernist thought on the art world has made it such that it's no longer important what the initial thought was ... now the viewer decides, with post-modernism there is no objective concept. So, to spell it out ... it doesn't matter what the artists concept is so long as the viewer perceives that there is one!

      Of course there's a case for us having entered post-post-modernism but it's not clear on the complexion of that value system yet, IMHO.

      PS: I'm an objectivist personally, I believe in objective truth, lot's of people don't appear to though.

  3. What? by hfis · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Other caution: hitting reload to see the next cool computer-generated abstract 'painting' can be highly addictive."

    Does the person who submitted this have something personal against the owners of the site or something? I hope they know where to send the bill after their server has been reduced to a useless pile of molten plastic.

    1. Re:What? by rebeka+thomas · · Score: 2, Informative

      I hope they know where to send the bill after their server has been reduced to a useless pile of molten plastic.

      Common misconception, but a complete myth. A slashdotting has no more chance of melting or burning a server than does ping flooding it. The worst that can happen is a server side crash caused by misconfiguration, and that won't damage the hardware.

      --
      RST
  4. Needs more by aePrime · · Score: 3, Funny

    If only somebody would generate background midi music!

    Just kidding, it's pretty interesting.

    1. Re:Needs more by daniel_yokomiso · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If only somebody would generate background midi music!

      It's impossible to generate quality midi music without professional musicians!!

      --
      Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
  5. art? by incal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Art isn't about being pretty. Art is about emotional, spiritual communication between an artist, his culture, work of art, and public.

    some random images are no more art than some randomly placed things on my workbench.

    1. Re:art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I always thought art made you question some aspect of the world around you. I guess this raises the question "who is the artist?".

      Saying you do not think it is art does not mean it is not art, it just means that you in particular cannot find a way to connect to the images. I'm sure other people could (my mother, for example, was at one point very into Howard Hodgkin, a painter who uses apparently random strokes - I couldn't see what she was on about, but I would still classify those paintings as art).

      Matthew

    2. Re:art? by Xiph · · Score: 5, Insightful

      however, the work of programmers who created it could be considered art, the big difference from a painting is that this art is interactive.
      the work isn't just the one image, it's the whole thing.

      Remember that the algorithms that makes it have been created by someone, and probably tweaked a bit too.
      all this tweaking and coding is not that much different to molding a shape out of clay.

      --
      Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
    3. Re:art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Some people claim that artists do random things, and that computers can do art.

      The real way to find out is to do some kind of "turing test" for art.

    4. Re:art? by daveb · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Art isn't about being pretty.

      Yes it is

      Art is about emotional, spiritual communication between an artist, his culture, work of art, and public.

      you almost defined "pretty" there (in a pretentious "arty" way) - but that last cavet ... I guess there are no public art collections them. Stopping it being public removes the "art" from the work eh

      >some random images are no more art than some >randomly placed things on my workbench.

      sounds like an idea for my next installation. I'm not sure why you don't think that is "art"

    5. Re:art? by prockcore · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Art isn't about being pretty. Art is about emotional, spiritual communication between an artist, his culture, work of art, and public.

      And you're saying this isn't? The artist is the programmer. His communication is the flash and how you interact with it.

    6. Re:art? by incal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      but we are exposed not to beauty of their code, but some - in my eyes - random graphical effects. you're just expanding concept of the art to level, where anything goes.

      I know, its quite stylish today, postmodernism... but I prefer here to be conservatist. :)

    7. Re:art? by baywulf · · Score: 3, Funny

      Then why is it when I go to a museum some random images are passed of as art?

    8. Re:art? by malfunct · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Unless I'm totally missing something I had a program that did the exact same thing on my TRS-80 coco 2, nothing I'd consider amazing.

      If someone could explain what makes this so groundbreaking maybe I'd have a better appreciation of it.

      --

      "You can now flame me, I am full of love,"

    9. Re:art? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 2, Interesting

      you need to reparse that:

      spiritual communication between an artist [...] and [the] public

      it's public==audience (noun).

      Anyway, I would have to side (partly) with the GP. Beauty is in the eye that beholds it. And thus art has to convey a message to its viewers. However, not everything that conveys a message is art - and the distinction is highly subjective. But the intent to convey a message from the creator is almost always a prerequisite.

      Bottom-line: art sense is mostly acquired through education, as it's tied to the culture of that era. There are, of course, examples of art that transcend the local culture - and one may restrict the definition of art to their kind (and receive the scorn or ire from lots of artists that won't qualify, as well as from hordes of 'connoisseurs'). But there's no real problem with that, as what really matters is the impression on the individual: it's art for me if I feel it as such.

      And no, art does not have to be 'pretty'. In fact, most of the stuff that endures is beautiful, not pretty. There's a distinction, you know.

    10. Re:art? by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 3, Insightful
      OK, but who's the judge of the "Turing test"? As in the "real" Turing test, I see a great bias in the premise that a human must judge whether some entitiy on the other side of the curtain is a computer or a human. Computers are far more objective than humans, so computers should be used to judge a "Turing test." What I consider witty conversation may be mindless blather to you, and visa-versa, so the only "Turing test" that I will find valid is the one I personally judge.* Naturally, you would also have to be a judge to accept the verdict, as would everyone else.

      I see no great leap to conclude that, similarly, a "Turing test" for art would be biased and thus worthless if it solely had human judges. Art to me may be junk to you, and visa-versa.**

      So any "Turing test" for art would quickly degenerate into something like David Letterman's bit, "Is This Anything?" And if you've seen that, you'll know how pointless this whole discussion really is.

      * Of course, any computer that passed the Turing test would be just as biased at judging it as any human, which in a way proves my point -- only I can judge a Turing test to my own satisfaction.

      ** Naturally, if a computer were capable of judging a "Turing test" for art, a computer would be capable of creating that art, thus mooting the entire discussion.

      --
      If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
    11. Re:art? by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apparantly, it's the fact that it's done with PHP. I guess PHP is considered incapable of doing this, and thus getting PHP to do it amazes some folk. I'm not familiar enought with PHP to be either amazed or underwhelmed by this announcement, but I do find it amusing, and I haven't even RTFA!

      --
      If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
    12. Re:art? by RollingThunder · · Score: 2, Funny

      I always thought it was the sign of a great night out. That or a traffic cone.

    13. Re:art? by AllenChristopher · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The issue is not whether I think it is art. The issue is whether the computer thinks it is art. The computer does not think it is art because the computer does not think anything, not yet.

      See Daniel Dennett and the intentional stance... Art is always intentional. Even if you just drop your ketchup by accident then think it is pretty and photograph it for the wall, you're still accomplishing intention after having made the pattern. You're intending it to be something.

      This is why not every shit you take or every footprint you make is a work of art. You don't intend them to be. You can easily intend one to be if you like. At that point we can start having heated discussions about whether the shit can be art, but not before.

      In this case, then, you could easily say that the program is a piece of art, but any invidual animation is NOT. It is the totality of the images which is art, and that totality was not created by the computer. The program is a sort of multi-dimensional sculpture visible only from a certain perspective. The artist is the programmer.

      To say the computer is the artist here is the equivalent of taking the missing arms of the Venus de Milo, then saying that the arms are a work of art and that the Venus made that work. The Venus didn't make anything, it just existed and broke.

    14. Re:art? by clifyt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Then why is it when I go to a museum some random images are passed of as art?"

      I have done a bit of random generated musics, so I might be able to answer this.

      The random is not truely random -- there was some alg that the artist designed that created it. My roommate paints and watching him sometimes, he's slapping his brush down and doesn't know exactly where its going to land, but its going to land within specific parameters he gave it...some have VERY specific parameters, others not so specific.

      The alg could be considered like that. You can state exactly what you want, or you can state generally what you want.

      Past that, there is the human element of weeding out the bad. Or compositing these now pseudorandom bits into something new. Honestly, a photographer is as much about the art as well -- its not like he can grow a mountain exactly the way he wants it -- he finds his subject and then finds the best way to present it. In a sense, his subject is just as random (though refined though billions of years as opposed to hours of programming).

      So, if you go into a museum and see random art -- it might be random, but its creation most certainly wasn't, nor was its selection and presentation. The art comes into play when the human imparts his or her opinions on the work -- sometimes even just the title can change your attitude on the subject (I've don't this with my random musics -- given different titles and watched as people would tell me that one of the titled pieced implying a relationship felt different that the one that implied a martian landscape or locked in the basement). You random image is only a small part of the art...anyone that doesn't get this doesn't understand art :-)

    15. Re:art? by alex_tibbles · · Score: 2, Informative

      You might want to look at Harold Cohen, the author of AARON. You might also be interested in a talk he did after retiring at the Tate (real format). I don't think that it's entirely clear whether the paintings are the work, or the program is the work.
      AARON however, was capable of creating representation images, which requires AI work in of itself. I am not sure (without perusing the code) much K++ is intelligent.

      --
      Posters recognized by their sig,
    16. Re:art? by vidarh · · Score: 2, Insightful
      No, we are being exposed to the outcome of a process. That outcome is a program whose visual representation is a (near infinite) series of animation. The process is the writing of the program.

      How is this different from a painting, where the visual representation is more static, yes, but is still influenced by the views and state of mind of the audience at the time, the light conditions, context in society (a painting of the WTC shown before and after 9/11 would likely evoke very different reactions, for instance), and in the same way we are not exposed to the artistic process, and only a very few of us are exposed to the beauty of the "raw" work closes to the source code: What techniques were applied to achieve the effects that people react to? What principles does the visual composition follows? Why were the colour scheme chosen?

      And yes, K++ DOES contain code that imposes a specific set of principles for visual composition, and colour scheme among others.

      Whether it's good art is highly subjective, but deriding it as just "some random graphical effects" is ignoring what it is: An exposition of how heuristics applied to randomness can be used to create graphics that emulate the esthetics of an artistic genre.

      What makes it not art?

    17. Re:art? by daveb · · Score: 2, Insightful
      And no, art does not have to be 'pretty'. In fact, most of the stuff that endures is beautiful, not pretty. There's a distinction, you know.

      No - I don't know. Or rather "so you say". Beautiful, pretty, elegant, stunning ... start defining them, try locking them in a box and you start having problems. They are not tightly defined quantifiable essences.

      For something to be "art" it must be able to be appreciated ... it mustbe pretty to somone in some way

      "Pretty" != "meaningless fluff" but is simply a statement of appreciation. I'm pretty, that code's pretty neat this picture is pretty that workbench is your pretty ... perhaps I go to far.

  6. Desktop Wallpaper by wolrahnaes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    this could be reall sweet on platforms supporting using a web page as a wallpaper

    --
    I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
    1. Re:Desktop Wallpaper by spectral · · Score: 2, Informative

      One thing I miss from windows is drempels. It's not abstract art like this, but just weird swirly patterns and stuff. You can set it to handle any overlay color, so for a while I had the backgrounds of a lot of windows set to rgb(1,1,1), which I set drempels to overlay. This way black things didn't get messed up if they were meant to be black. A great majority of the time it didn't choose certain bright colors, so use those for text.

      Anyone know of anything similar for my GNU/Linux/XFree86(Soon to be X.Org)/KDE machine? :)

    2. Re:Desktop Wallpaper by B1ackDragon · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, I used to get a kick out of this and run my wallpaper as ifs or the OSX screensaver knockoff:

      /usr/lib/xscreensaver/xflame -root

      The /usr/lib/screensaver part is there because its not in my path, so I have to tell it where the screensaver (in this case xflame) is, and the -root option tells it to display on the root window. I'm not sure how well this will work on Gnome etc., as they might handle their root window a lot causing them to disrupt the 'saver, but for simple WMs it works great.

      There are a lot of extra flags for each screensaver too: man xflame

      And if you put it into a startup script (such as .xinitrc) with a & after it, it will tell it to run the command in the background and move on.

      Cool ways to eat CPU. Also, might I suggest www.electricsheep.org

      --
      The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
  7. hrmm.... by abscondment · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sounds like a deserving candidate for the Museum of Bad Art

  8. More Minimalist really .... by supersnail · · Score: 2, Funny
    ... it crashed my browser!


    (Netscapre 7.2)

    --
    Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
  9. AI? by agoatley · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What exactly does the AI do? Yeah, it has to decide on some basic actions eg adding a circle, but is that worthy of the term AI?

    Surely it's not that complex. Correct me if I'm wrong, but AI is an overstatement.
    -Ashton

  10. I'm sorry, but this looks like crap by t0qer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used too produce stuff like this on my atari what.. 15 or more years ago, in basic. I'm not impressed in the slightest. Thumbs down for an image that looks like it could have been produced by my little brother with a crayon.

    Now if you truly want some cool abstract art, try debris by Brennen Underwood of nullsoft fame. For some reason it has a tendancy too gather porn pictures in the images it creates. Is it because there's a lot of porn on the net? Or is it because nullsoft = sex. Try it for yourself and you tell me.

    1. Re:I'm sorry, but this looks like crap by darkain · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have talked w/ brennan about the pr0n last week, and he gave me the link the application dynamically pulls all of the images from: random images - WARNING, potentially NSFW, its random.

    2. Re:I'm sorry, but this looks like crap by t0qer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hey folks...

      Badmofo is getting hit pretty hard, i've set up a mirror here . If you're having problems accessing badmofo, just use my mirror.

      (PS Sorry if this hit you too hard Brennen)

      --toq

    3. Re:I'm sorry, but this looks like crap by leoboiko · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's your fault for mentioning in /. that there is pr0n there :)

      --
      Prescriptive grammar:linguistics :: alchemy:chemistry. Stop being a nazi and learn some science.
  11. Wassily Kandinsky... by EricKoh · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think the father of abstract art just turned in his grave....

    1. Re:Wassily Kandinsky... by baldcamel · · Score: 2, Funny

      If Wassily Kandinsky were alive today he say "help, help, I seem to be trapped in some kind of box"

  12. Umm... not really. by applef00 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hit about ten of those random abstracts. They all--every one of them--looked like something I would have seen in a hair salon in the late '80s, early '90s. It's not exactly difficult to grab a few geometrical shapes in various colors and slap them on a solid background. Personally, I'd rather look at those horrid Nagel prints than this pseudo-abstract rubbish. Interesting computer project? Maybe. Art? Absolutely not.

  13. Similar Project Evolvotron by knightshrubs · · Score: 5, Informative

    Evolvotron

    From the page: Evolvotron is an interactive "generative art" application for Linux to evolve images/textures/patterns/animations through an iterative process of random mutation and user-selection driven evolution. It's not running in Flash, you may render all images to arbitrary resolutions and is perfect for creating new desktop backgrounds... Also check the Gallery and Animations.

    The code is licensed under the GPL. It uses Qt and is multi-threaded.

  14. Seems like it would be better as a Ming example... by Granos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The project itself really doesn't impress me. All the K++ people did was use a random number generator to generate colors, gradients, curve coordinates, circles, etc. The actual cool part (Dynamically genereated fully functional Flash movies through PHP) was all the work of the Ming library coders. This is akin to someone creating a spinning rainbow colored 3D cube in OpenGL or someone applying a ton of Photoshop filters to a cool picture of the sky. It looks nice to someone who doesn't know how it was made, but in reality, all of the challenging and innovative things were done by the person who programmed the library, not the person who used some very basic implementation of the library.

  15. Generated Art by mr+i+want+to+go+home · · Score: 5, Informative
    The idea of 'generated art' is pretty cool I think. It's certainly a big step back to the roots of Modernist art - which was about explorations of tone/colour/form/balance and not necessarily subject. Unfortunately lots of art at the moment is really quite selfish - Tracy Emin's unmade bed for example...it seems to be a symptom of the voyeristic phase our culture is going through (Big Brother, Blogging, etc)

    This k++ (or whatever) is an ok example, but there are some truly fantastic sites around..Try Pray Station or (one of my hero's) John Maeda. John's work is incredibly beautiful, and he's a half decent coder to boot.

    1. Re:Generated Art by selfpromotingartist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've got some computer generated art here They are generated by applying a genetic algorithm to the parameters of an iterated function. The program tries to maximise a weighted sum of the powers of the spatial frequencies whilst minimizing the clumping of the trajectories in phase space, leading to some quite intricate and structured patterns.

  16. No, this is not art. by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd be reeeeeal curious as to how they define "AI". And no, a PHP class that uses interpolation of random numbers to create vectors is NOT AI in my book.

    The real thing that irks me about this project is that IT'S NOT ART. There is much more to art than just crapping out random shapes, colors and patterns -- which it appears is all this thing does.

    You could make more artistic shapes by giving a paintball gun to a monkey -- or for those on a budget, just by pissing a monkey off.

    I'd suggest the developers take a course in Art101, study up on color theory and composition and then create code that takes aesthetics, design and ambient factors into account.

    By calling their online mess maker "AI generated modern art" is a grave disservice to both Computer Science and the Fine Arts commmunities all in one.

    In response to such heinous crimes against man, machine and nature, I hereby sentence the developes to be the recipient of 100,000 porno popups per annum and be given an AOL CD every month for the duration of their pitiful life... may the lord have mercy on their souls.

    1. Re:No, this is not art. by Vellmont · · Score: 2, Insightful


      The real thing that irks me about this project is that IT'S NOT ART.

      I've never fully understood why it's important to determine if something is art or not. I don't care if this thing is "art" or not, I just think it sucks-ass. Something having attained the status of "art" gives it no special status.

      --
      AccountKiller
  17. Where's the AI? by amacedo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I seriously fail to spot the AI in this.

    Random number generation is more likely, but I doubt any AI techniques are needed or applicable to this.

    --


    www.enterweb.pt
  18. sure it's art -- it's just bad art by spot · · Score: 2, Informative

    try this for something with more substance:
    Electric Sheep.

    --

    Scott Draves

  19. What does this have to do with graphics cards? by arekusu · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since when does Flash run on the GPU? This is entirely CPU-bound.

  20. Nice Disclaimer by Propaganda13 · · Score: 4, Funny

    DISCLAIMER: This software is graphics-intensive. The author is not responsible if viewing these Flash movies causes your web browser or computer to crash. It's not my fault if your video card can't handle it. :-) /. reply: It's not my fault if your server can't handle it. :-)

  21. Why PHP? by mrbarkeeper · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Honest question, no flamebait: Why did they use PHP? You can create the same effects entirely in ActionScript, the native language of Flash.

  22. Stolen from MINIX by muyuubyou · · Score: 4, Funny

    These guys couldn't have possibly coded that in a question of months. This means they must have stolen it from Minix. I think I'm going to write a book about it. I'm so smart.

  23. Really? by rixstep · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wassily Kandinsky, father of abstract art.

    Really? And here I thought it was Moliere.

  24. I've made a random art generator before by bersl2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The program made imitations of Mondrian's paintings. Not too hard.

  25. It ain't Kadinsky by ortholattice · · Score: 3, Informative

    While it's interesting in a crude sort of way, it just doesn't capture the intensity, spirit, and complexity of the real thing. You might want to look at what it's trying to imitate. Some samples: Kadinsky, Composition VIII (1923) , Kadinsky, Yellow-Red-Blue (1925), Kandinsky, Decisive Pink (1932). Wouldn't you rather have these on your wall?

  26. Screensaver by igrp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Very cool. I guess I will retire my screensaver and use this instead. Should be easy to write a simple wrapper that fires up a webbrowser (or maybe call mozilla http://mirror/screen.php directly).

  27. What about my 3d abstracts? by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lest anyone think that is good abstract art, come take a look at my site. I computer-generate 3d abstracts. Also, I paint, draw and sculpt, and have been doing so since my youth. Now I have a degree in Fine Art, but still, you should be careful to just patently state that what you are doing is "pretty", because that is a relative term. What does it mean? What is the purpose? To attempt to generate an interesting composition, right? So why not generate it, decide it's interesting, and then show us that one? Why do we all have to sit through 999 bad ones to get to one good one?

    --
    stuff |
    1. Re:What about my 3d abstracts? by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If we accept everything as art on the internet, that's fine, because one could view the internet as one large gallery. However, if I experiment with that tool, I can make works that look interesting, while a random number generator will have a harder time. Why?
      It's because I'm a person, and I have a sense of aesthetics. We all do. There's no reason to level the playing field to the point where everything is at the same technical level. However, I will concede that technical ability has little to do with creating a successful abstract work. However, a lack of technique has to be compensated in some other way (i.e. creative use of materials, genius idea, etc), or else the work will be lost in a sea of similar works. It is for this reason that the farther back we look, the more we tend to only see the "masters" of a genre -- all the other works that were similar to each other were lost or ignored, but the works that had an edge or stood out were protected and preserved. The farther back you go, the more impressive the works become. But people make the decisions to preserve or pitch it. So we are looking back at our collective sense of aesthetics. We see the best works by counterexample -- the ones that weren't that good were lost. Of course, now and then we find a Rembrandt in an attic, but think of it this way: how often are other works found in attics? Quite. Do we care? Not necessarily. We care because Rembrandt was a superstar even while he was alive; his works have a great edge AND great technique. Plus, most WERE preserved in private collections and museums.

      --
      stuff |
  28. Open-source content-creation, but no player by motown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I just don't understand is that Macromedia licenses the flash specs on the condition that it is used by other products (such as Ming) to create content. Apparently, it is not permitted to use the specs to develop an alternative open-source plugin.

    So why is that? It's not like Macromedia is making any money on the plugins, and besides: the more compatible plugins are out there, the larger the userbase for Flash, right?

    Can someone here explain this to me?

    --
    "Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
  29. Big Deal by frenchgates · · Score: 3, Funny

    Kandinsky is such old news. When I see an AI art generator that can make a dress out of meat or sell jars of its own excrement for six figures, then I'll be impressed.

    --
    Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
  30. Oh give it time - just a proof of concept so far! by shomon2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I see lots of negative comments, and I really don't think this program deserves it since it's just at the first version and maybe it shouldn't even have been posted yet until it actually does something more visually appealing. What can be seen so far is just the potential. And for me this is really interesting. Only failing is that it's Flash not SVG but that's just my taste.

    I notice for example that the author is also a poet who knows Neruda and uses a bit of surrealism. Vector based art is probably the best way of recreating what was pioneered by a similar artistic genre - Futurism - which used early 19th century typography to produce incredible works of art in written text, echoing the onomatopeia of battles and love of violence and war (ok nobody's perfect). So loads of text all over the place, and perhaps moving about - this is perfect media to showcase a program like this. There are lots of examples (try googling for futurist typography or go here http://www.colophon.com/gallery/futurism/14.html for a look at some of it).

    So I think the author should merge some of his skills and a very good bit of software/art could result.

    The other is an area less touched: improvisational scores - the rules by which experimental artists can improvise. No longer do people have to be bound by what can be printed, and there are now some examples of software based improvisation scores (wish I could find more examples of the more experimental of these, but am submerged by crap sw when I search). I made one in svg for example. So this program, if it's to merge vector graphics with AI, could go in this direction, maybe supplying some kind of interaction and participation in a live multimedia event or performance?

    So I see lots of room for improvement but loads of potential here!

  31. Machine-generated art since 1973 by Corvus9 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Harold Cohen has been writing computer programs that generate art since 1973.

    His latest project, Aaron, is the result of many years of experiment and refinement. The K++ project can draw abstract polygons. Aaron can draw portraits, landscapes, and still lives using perspective, detail, and composition.