dopefulhopefiend

Artificial Creativity

September 26th, 2006 at 11:51 pm (Art, Design, Webnology)

I ran across these images exploring NodeBox, which is a programming environment that can be thought of as Processing for Python (instead of Java), being developed by the Experimental Media group at St. Lucas School of Arts, Antwerp, Belgium. Emphasis is on generating 2D design and AI (instead of 3D graphics and interaction).

Percolator is a program written in NodeBox that generated the images above:

Percolator is a set of algorithms that create an artistic
composition of images, based on what’s in the news today. In short,
three things take place once the code is run:

• Harvest news from the internet: using the Google
  library for NodeBox, a number of news sites are visited (CNN, BBC, Fox
  News, Google News, ABC News, MSNBC, CBSNews, Yahoo! News, Wired News,
  USA TODAY) and summarised with an extension of the Keywords library for NodeBox.

• Harvest corresponding images: a number of images are drawn from the Photobjects library, based on the keyword summary of today’s news.

• Collate the images: a composition is then assembled from these images using the PhotoBot
  library for NodeBox. This algorithm knows things about contrast and
  harmony, and typically applies rotation, scaling, overlay blends, hue
  blends, and gradient masks.

The developer, Tom De Smedt, has a great article about his work with NodeBox and Artificial Creativity.

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