[HN Gopher] (2016) Interactive Neural Network Art
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       (2016) Interactive Neural Network Art
        
       Author : vinhnx
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2025-03-30 12:31 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (otoro.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (otoro.net)
        
       | alook wrote:
       | I love this work by Otoro / David Ha.
       | 
       | For come context, this uses a technique called CPPN's
       | (compositional pattern producing networks), where the inputs are
       | (x, y, sqrt(x^2 + y^2)) and then there are several neural net
       | layers with different activation functions and randomly
       | initialized weights. It actually resembles the optical physics of
       | light reflecting through glass (which explains why it sometimes
       | looks like light reflecting through a gem).
       | 
       | Otoro wrote some great blog posts on this:
       | 
       | https://blog.otoro.net/2016/03/25/generating-abstract-patter...
       | 
       | https://blog.otoro.net/2015/07/31/neurogram/
       | 
       | https://github.com/hardmaru/cppn-tensorflow
        
         | lawlessone wrote:
         | >It actually resembles the optical physics of light reflecting
         | through glass (which explains why it sometimes looks like light
         | reflecting through a gem).
         | 
         | Is this related in any way to how Nvidias NeRF's work?
        
           | dimatura wrote:
           | Yeah, if you look at the original NERF paper (which is not by
           | Nvidia btw) they cite CPPNs as prior work.
        
       | byearthithatius wrote:
       | At the risk of sounding like an idiot. What even is this? Is
       | there a purpose? It looks just like random pixel generation to
       | me. There is no explanation anywhere I can find on a "purpose" or
       | "motivation".
        
         | Legend2440 wrote:
         | Who says art needs a purpose?
         | 
         | It makes abstract patterns, some of which you may find pretty.
         | It's similar to other algorithmic art dating back to the 60s.
        
           | tartoran wrote:
           | Art doesn't necessarily have a purpose other than being
           | inspiring and anything could be inspiring to some people. But
           | art also has something to do with the human experience, with
           | a process that the artist finds and sticks to, something that
           | teaches them something back, it could be something about
           | themselves etc.
        
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