Dada, Close, Photomosaics, and Fractals

We covered a lot of ground today, starting with demoing students' artistic computer games (some more plainly art-centered than others).
Then we followed up on the weekend reading assignment of Tristan Tzara's "How to Make a Dadaist Poem", by using a Python script I tossed together to do the modern equivalent.  Just for fun, here's the poem we created out of the first part of my previous blog post... (it helps if you read it in an overly dramatic voice).

KIND ARE

air as
you certainly
their
necessarily
require class performing
inspiration from yesterday
how
instance count interaction
these about for algorithm by walkers
and art
sand a art talked some
not algorithmic
we
in computer bit may they art unplugged in

driven of wind computational generative might a

an they book computational
with
my and take amazing

Next we moved on to discuss Photoshop (or Gimp) style image filters, and the manipulation of pixels.  I demonstrated how to implement a couple interesting image filters in NetLogo.  For example, at right is a "watery" filter effect rendered on the photo of a certain computer science professor I happen to know.



This segued into a discussion of photorealism and the work of Chuck Close, and how it was inspirational for the development of photomosaics (which should probably have a "TM" placed after it, courtesy of Robert Silvers...)

We then went on to create ShapeMosaics, where a photo was created out of a large number of colored shapes... like this butterfly of butterflies below.

If you can't see the smaller butterflies, click on the picture to enlarge it.

And finally, we talked a little about recursion and fractal art, and generated a few recursive trees...