Ming + PHP5 + AI = Pretty

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."

Comments

Nice warning.

[General Sherman]

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

Poor Abstract Artists

[BlueCup]

Looks like their careers are over =(

Re:Poor Abstract Artists

[linzeal]

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.

Re:Poor Abstract Artists

[pbhj]

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.

What?

[hfis]

"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.

Needs more

[aePrime]

If only somebody would generate background midi music!

Just kidding, it's pretty interesting.

art?

[incal]

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.

Re:art?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:art?

[Xiph]

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.

Re:art?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:art?

[prockcore]

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.

Re:art?

[baywulf]

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

Re:art?

[malfunct]

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.

Re:art?

[Rick the Red]

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.

Desktop Wallpaper

[wolrahnaes]

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

hrmm....

[abscondment]

Sounds like a deserving candidate for the Museum of Bad Art

AI?

[agoatley]

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

I'm sorry, but this looks like crap

[t0qer]

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.

Re:I'm sorry, but this looks like crap

[darkain]

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.

Re:I'm sorry, but this looks like crap

[t0qer]

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

Similar Project Evolvotron

[knightshrubs]

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.

Seems like it would be better as a Ming example...

[Granos]

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.

Generated Art

[mr i want to go home]

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.

No, this is not art.

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

Where's the AI?

[amacedo]

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.

What does this have to do with graphics cards?

[arekusu]

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

Nice Disclaimer

[Propaganda13]

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. :-)

Why PHP?

[mrbarkeeper]

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

Stolen from MINIX

[muyuubyou]

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.

It ain't Kadinsky

[ortholattice]

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?

What about my 3d abstracts?

[192939495969798999]

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?

Open-source content-creation, but no player

[motown]

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?

Big Deal

[frenchgates]

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.