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

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.

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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

Desktop Wallpaper

[wolrahnaes]

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

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.

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.

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.

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?