The Friday Fix: A Remarkable and Free Way to Create Art
Nearly every major city is flooded with the famous discount stores we've all come to know, that sell relatively well-made home goods at affordable prices. That's great news!
The not-so-great news is that these beautiful wares are produced for large market consumption. This means that we will see those same decor pieces in photos, and in the homes of our friends and family members over and over again. Do you know what that kind of repetition does to an item? It cheapens it, making it in some ways less special.
Today I'll share an unusual artistic gem that I discovered a few months back.
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Free DIY Art at Your Fingertips
While looking for some unique and random artwork one evening, I stumbled across a website called Random Art. It uses an amazing program that converts simple text into remarkable abstract art.
In all honesty I can't really explain to you how the process works, but I'll do my best. To put it simply, a really, really smart fellow - and mathematical genius - named Andrej Bauer used a complicated programming language called OCaml to create an algorithm that assigns letters, numbers and symbols to colors.
All the user has to do is go to www.random-art.org/online/, enter any combination of text, letters or symbols and press "paint". Slowly the art work is "drawn" right before your eyes. Below are some stunning works that I was able to create using this program.
The text entered never computes the way you think it will. For instance, for a couple of the images above I entered various versions of the text "Mouse stap" or "Quick Stap", then "king burger" and "Foolish Switches Freedom". Those word combinations produced the botanical looking images you see above. This program can keep a person busy for hours on end!
Can you imagine these squares placed in a beautiful frame and hung on a wall? Did you know that when you sign up for my newsletter by clicking HERE, you can get a set of 4 mathematically generated botanical images, ready to print and frame?
You can even create images with splashes of color. Below are a few more samples with the text that was entered in order to produce them.
A Quick Warning for Parents
As is usually the case with G-rated pastimes, some people like to come along to ruin things. Please be aware that in the "Gallery" portion of the website where some of the generated images are stored, a few have entered vulgar text into the program. No doubt they were curious about the image it would create. So if your child will be creating art using this program, you may want to monitor their use.
And that's my fix for this week. Tell me,
- What do you think about Random Art?
- Do you think you might want to create some inexpensive artwork using it?
One more favor may I ask of you?
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Merci Beaucoup!
