Yeah, it’s been a while. 2009 was the year of iPhone apps. Objective-C is a fun language, but so different than anything else that it takes a lot of concentration to get through the learning curve. I had a lot of fun with it, but by the end of last year I became kind of burnt out on the whole thing. For the last month or two, I haven’t really been doing much coding outside of work at all. A much needed break.
But in the last few weeks I’ve been feeling the itch to create something with code. In the Resources section of this site, I’ve listed a few different tools that one can use for creating art with code. While I’ve downloaded and kicked the tires of most of them, I hadn’t really done anything serious with any of them. I decided this would be a good time to dig into some of these tools and languages a bit deeper.
So, for the next few weeks or months, you will hopefully see some new, non-Flash stuff up here. I’ve been playing with Context Free Art quite a bit, so the first series of images will come from that. I’ve also been experimenting with Structure Synth, which has a very similar paradigm, so look for some images from that as well. And more tools/languages to come.
If you are really stalking me, then you’ll know that I will be speaking at FiTC in Toronto this April. My presentation is called Programming Art, and I hope to touch on a number of these tools, showing how to get them, the concept behind them, and a whirlwind tutorial on each one. This forces me into actually learning each one myself, so gives plenty of opportunities to create interesting images, many of which will wind up here.
Context Free is an interesting thing. I had a play a while back and produced some pleasing abstract images.
If you’re interested, they’re on my website here. I don’t have the source any more, but I did upload it to the Context Free website.
I found the images got a bit ‘samey’ after a while though. There’s only so many recursive images you can produce before getting a bit bored.
True about the “samey”-ness, but it’s pretty amazing what you can do with so little. Plus, the grammar forces you to think very differently than writing in linear/object oriented code.