Generative Gestaltung

Today another much wanted book arrived. Generative Gestaltung 'Entwerfen, Programmieren, Visualisieren'. It describes the use of Processing within design and art with loads of examples, techniques and approaches.

About a year ago I saw this book somewhere in Berlin. I didn't bought it because it was in German and I thought there was an English edition available as well. But soon I found out that there wasn't an English edition, I left my e-mail at the publishers website for being updated about the upcoming release of an English version.
It's been a year now and there's still no English version available (and think there never will be) but lets hope that when there's a second edition in the making it will be in English to serve a bigger public.

I haven't read that much from it, but I'm loving it already! Learning Processing and German at once.

GenerativeShape through OSC

I started coding in Processing to look for a solution getting computational generative shapes in sync with the sculpture his servos.

I found a GenerativeShape example on the Processing website and wanted to get x/y coordinates of the generated triangle corners into MaxMSP.
The sketch posted here is an edited example with OSC (for x y coordinates corners triangle) and will eventually output over Syphon. When I got the Syphon running and the OSC noise smoothed I'll upload a video of this code running along with the sculpture.

** edit 19-03-2012 replaced processing sketch **

Here is the adjusted Processing sketch:
GenerativeShape.zip

** edit 19-03-2012 replaced maxpatch **

And a new Max/MSP patch:
Servo-Maxuino[Max6].zip

(It's a Max6 file now. Finished: Smooth the OSC input and get rid of the noise (float zero's). Clean this patch and make all comments in English, Save settings file for scaling etc.)

Workshop: Genetic Algorithms - Amersfoort (NL)

The day after the official opening party of our new studio MOBi and the new gallery of NP3.tmp I went to Amersfoort for a workshop Genetic Algorithms hosted by Opentoko.org

Calx Interactive Design - Evolutionary Generative System

Genetic Algorithms are computational techniques that mimics biological evolutionary processes. Applied within the fields of design, they can generate unpredictable form solutions and variability in answers towards design goals.
The workshop was part of a broader event centered around genetic algorithms from a scientific, technical and artistic approach.

The event started with a Studium Generale lecture from Kirsten ten Tusscher about the use of genetic algorithms in biological research. This lecture introduced me to some new terms and topics and gave me an insight in where science stands nowadays with their research and techniques/models.


In between the lecture and the workshop there was an exposition of artwork made with genetic algorithms. The workshop Genetic Algorithms (in Processing) was given by Luis Fernandez, software engineer and artist.

The workshop focused on the following aspects of genetic algorithms in art & design:

• History and development of this field
• How to translate the rules of evolution to rules for design
• Increase creativity by sometimes break and sometimes copy the rules of nature

Because the workshop was given in Fablab Amersfoort we were encouraged to think about physical output. After this introduction we experimented with some basic examples of genetic algorithms in Processing. These examples can be found on Luis Fernandez his blog The Blogging Phenotype

Both the lecture and workshop gave me a lot of things to think about. I have to set conditions in what way my genetic code will evolve and might interact with the audience. I'm reconsidering my first drawings and ideas and will post them when they got shape.