generativeart

Create Generative Art with R.

More on Instagram

Description

One overly simple but useful definition is that generative art is art programmed using a computer that intentionally introduces randomness as part of its creation process. -- Why Love Generative Art? - Artnome

The R package generativeart let's you create images based on many thousand points. The position of every single point is calculated by a formula, which has random parameters. Because of the random numbers, every image looks different.

In order to make an image reproducible, generative art implements a log file that saves the file_name, the seed and the formula.

Install

You can install the package with the devtools package directly from Github:

devtools::install_github("cutterkom/generativeart")

generativeart uses the tidyverse package.

Usage

The package works with a specific directory structure that fits my needs best. The first step is to create it with setup_directories(). All images are saved by default in img/everything/. I use img/handpicked/ to choose the best ones. In logfile/ you will find a csv file that saves the file_name, the seed and the used formula.

library(generativeart)

# set the paths
IMG_DIR <- "img/"
IMG_SUBDIR <- "everything/"
IMG_SUBDIR2 <- "handpicked/"
IMG_PATH <- paste0(IMG_DIR, IMG_SUBDIR)

LOGFILE_DIR <- "logfile/"
LOGFILE <- "logfile.csv"
LOGFILE_PATH <- paste0(LOGFILE_DIR, LOGFILE)

# create the directory structure
generativeart::setup_directories(IMG_DIR, IMG_SUBDIR, IMG_SUBDIR2, LOGFILE_DIR)

# include a specific formula, for example:
my_formula <- list(
  x = quote(x_i^sample(1:4, 1) + sin(y_i^sample(1:4, 1))),
  y = quote(y_i^sample(1:4, 1) + sin(x_i^sample(1:4, 1)))
)

# call the main function to create five images with a polar coordinate system
generativeart::generate_img(formula = my_formula, nr_of_img = 5, polar = TRUE)

• You define you many images you want to create nr_of_img.
• For every image a seed is drawn from a number between 1 and 10000.
• This seed determines the random numbers in the formula.
• You can choose between are cartesian and a polar coordinate system by setting polar = TRUE or polar = FALSE
• the formula is a list()

Examples

It is a good idea to use the sine and cosine in the formula, since it garantues nice shapes, especially when combined with a polar coordinate system. One simple example:

my_formula <- list(
  x = quote(x_i^sample(1:4, 1) + sin(y_i^sample(1:4, 1))),
  y = quote(y_i^sample(1:4, 1) + sin(x_i^sample(1:4, 1)))
)

generativeart::generate_img(formula = my_formula, nr_of_img = 5, polar = TRUE)

Two of the resulting images:

seed = 7602:

seed = 2256:

seed = 8762:

The corresponding log file looks like that:

file_name	seed	formula_x	formula_y
2018-11-08-21-59_seed_7602.png	7602	pi_x^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_y^sample(2:4, 1))	pi_y^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_x^sample(2:4, 1))
2018-11-08-22-01_seed_2256.png	2256	pi_x^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_y^sample(2:4, 1))	pi_y^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_x^sample(2:4, 1))
2018-11-08-22-01_seed_8762.png	8762	pi_x^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_y^sample(2:4, 1))	pi_y^sample(2:4, 1) + sin(pi_x^sample(2:4, 1))

Inspiration

The basic concept is heavily inspired by Fronkonstin's great blog.