[HN Gopher] Genuary 2024: Generative Art / Creative Coding Month
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       Genuary 2024: Generative Art / Creative Coding Month
        
       Author : tripzilch
       Score  : 55 points
       Date   : 2023-12-31 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (genuary.art)
 (TXT) w3m dump (genuary.art)
        
       | tripzilch wrote:
       | For the fourth time (since Jan 2021), we have prepared 31
       | inspiring code art prompts for anyone who wants to sharpen their
       | creative coding skills during this monthly challenge.
        
       | Der_Einzige wrote:
       | Related to this, many top AI conferences are calling for art for
       | AI art exhibitions:
       | https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2023/CallForCreativeAI
       | 
       | I unfortunately didn't go to NeurIPS this year, but I'd love to
       | hear what it was like from someone who did attend.
        
       | pierrec wrote:
       | As someone who's been making art with code for a long time, I'm
       | under the impression that "generative", in the context of
       | computers and art, has had another change of meaning recently.
       | 
       | "Making generative art" now seems synonymous to "giving a prompt
       | to a black-box model created by a large corporation". Maybe
       | Genuary is better described as "algorithmic art"? At the very
       | least, you have to be aware that a wall of misunderstanding has
       | appeared between people using different definitions. Maybe this
       | is invisible to people inside a community, but this wall has
       | appeared _around_ the community and it 's probably not helping.
        
         | holoduke wrote:
         | Except that its not a simple prompt when generating high
         | quality art. It requires wiring of loras, controlnets,
         | upscalers, fine tuned models and more. Take a look at some of
         | many he workflow in Comfui. Gigantic workflows wiyh hundreds of
         | connecting nodes
        
         | jackstraw14 wrote:
         | The term "generative art" really has changed the last few
         | years. The wave of interest in generative art a few years ago
         | (along with NFTs) also involved a lot of art that wasn't
         | directly created directly from code [0] and no one seemed to
         | have much problem with it. It's not much of an active market
         | lately, but at the time it was just a different type of
         | generative art from stuff that is much more code-based [1].
         | 
         | [0] https://objkt.com/asset/hicetnunc/416966
         | 
         | [1] https://monogrid.xyz/
        
         | Lerc wrote:
         | I have done a fair bit of procedural generation
         | 
         | http://c50.fingswotidun.com/show/?code=z!eZvz%2F9%2Bduz%2F9%...
         | 
         | https://www.dwitter.net/d/20993
         | 
         | and quite a lot of work on Stable Diffusion techniques.
         | 
         | I'm quite comfortable sharing the space. They are not the same
         | thing as each other but neither is it necessary to be
         | dismissive of the approach. People are creating stuff for the
         | sake of creating stuff, that doesn't need to be gatekept
         | 
         | As the comment by holoduke mentions. Quality imagery from image
         | generation models is not as simple as giving a prompt to a
         | black box. This
         | https://fingswotidun.com/AITalk/images/DuckRun/FullAnim.gif
         | took me a lot of work and it is still far from ideal, (the
         | waistcoat jitter, the collar, the beak, the hair).
        
           | pierrec wrote:
           | I think we agree. "Giving a prompt to a black-box model
           | created by a large corporation" is just the average, and the
           | popular perception of the term "generative art". Genuary is
           | also explicitly about making art with code, so there is a
           | more technical distinction that has nothing to do with the
           | amount of effort required.
           | 
           | And maybe the solution is for Genuary to embrace AI art and
           | to stop describing itself as doing things with code
           | specifically. It's something to consider, but I think the AI
           | art would drown out the algorithmic stuff, and the latter
           | would probably have an exodus and be forced to start
           | something else.
           | 
           | As for people gatekeeping and being dismissive, yes those
           | people are out there. Hopefully my comment did not imply any
           | of that.
        
         | mattdesl wrote:
         | "Generative art" has been around for decades; over the last
         | several years it has often been used as a catch-all term that
         | often covered algorithmic art & computer art, and generally
         | with a focus on coding and computation. A lot of artists who
         | practice this (myself included) have long been using this label
         | to define our work.
         | 
         | It has always been a niche topic, but now that "generative AI"
         | is beginning to enter mainstream conversation, it's basically
         | competing with the terminology.
        
       | zengid wrote:
       | Edit: Hey my bad the prompts for Genuary are all for making
       | visuals, but I suppose they could be interpreted for audio too.
       | My bad, but I'll leave my music-nerd rant below in tact in case
       | anyone finds it useful                   ----------------
       | 
       | This is awesome, I didn't know about this but I've been
       | subconsciously preparing for it over Christmas break. Here's what
       | I've found useful:
       | 
       |  _Music:_
       | 
       | - Eli Fieldsteel's intro to SuperCollider course is fantastic.
       | SuperCollider language is kind of nice. Function literals are
       | simply curly braces, `{}`, and the last expression is returned.
       | It has pipe's for function arguments, so if you squint it kind of
       | feels like Ruby or Rust.                   // a silly function.
       | Note that paren "blocks" make evaluating multiple lines easier
       | (         x = {|num| num.squared + 42 };         y = x.(0);
       | )
       | 
       | If you've only ever used JavaScript, there's a lot of "wtf is
       | this shit" moments, but otherwise it's really nice. I feel like
       | SCLang is super powerful and want to use it for some projects.
       | Here's Eli's course playlist:
       | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPYzvS8A_rTYEba_4SDvR...
       | 
       | - Sonic Pi is built on-top of SuperCollider, but it's MUCH easier
       | to get started with making bleeps and bloops. Sam Aaron, who
       | originally created Overtone (a Clojure front-end for
       | SuperCollider) created Sonic Pi initially to teach kids computer
       | programming and music, but now it's turning into a pretty nice
       | live-coding setup. The language is basically a DSL extension of
       | Ruby, and although it's very elegant, I feel like it's a little
       | nerfed in terms of a full language when compared to SCLang, so
       | I'm sticking with the latter for now. High recommend checking it
       | out if you're new to making music or code. https://sonic-pi.net/
       | 
       | - This 'Intro To Live Coding' vid from Alex McLean is great.
       | Gives a good overview of a few fun tools out there that I won't
       | mention here for sake of time (check out Gibber and Hydra for
       | web-based coding things. Gibber is really slick). Alex invented
       | Tidal Cycles, which I feel is like god-tier in terms of power and
       | conciseness. Maybe I'll tinker with Tidal someday, but I want to
       | start with SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QY2x6aZzqc
       | 
       |  _Graphics_
       | 
       | - Processing is a great place to start:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JzDttgdILQ
       | 
       | - Great intro to programming shaders for art from kishimisu:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4s1h2YETNY
       | 
       | - Inigo Quilex invented ShaderToy among other things. I haven't
       | watched this yet but I'm sure it's awesome:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFld4EBO2RE
       | 
       | - Hydra looks pretty neat for live-coding graphics in the
       | browser: https://hydra.ojack.xyz/
       | 
       | I was really hoping to find a platform that would allow for
       | integrating a programmatic 'score' of music and drive visuals
       | from it, like one step above just using the wave-form to trigger
       | visuals.. I don't know if I've found what I'm happy with yet.. I
       | think I'll try to hook up the OSC signals from SuperCollider with
       | some visuals, but not sure. I want to use shaders if possible,
       | and SC doesn't really support that. Gibber seems great but I'm
       | not sure. Maybe Tidal has it, but the Tidal lang might take a
       | while to learn. I want to use raw frequency values for the notes
       | as much as possible, and that's really easy in SC. I don't want
       | to be stuck using midi notes.
        
       | etiam wrote:
       | Is making cringe-worthy portmanteaus on month names a marketing
       | fad now? This is something like the third instance I'm seeing in
       | as many weeks.
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-31 23:01 UTC)