Confetti #1

Confetti abstract art 45

Today starts a new series called Confetti. I am leaving fractals behind for now. Although I am sure I will return to fractals, I always do.

This is abstract art and algorithmic art. In the world of mathematics and computers definitions are precise. You can look at something and definitely decide if it fits the definition or not. The real world is not so clean, and the above linked Wikipedia articles are trying to classify things that are difficult to classify. I am sure someday I will be compelled to return to these definitions and add my two cents. But, you know, one day at a time. I will avoid that rabbit hole today, and simply assert that this is that type of art.

This image is generated by an algorithm that I wrote. The original idea was to start with a simple minimalist geometric abstraction, in this case white and black with a small splotch of blue and cyan, with smooth color transitions. Then chop the image up into small squares, displace the squares by varying amounts and then repeat until the original was suitably mixed up. When I implemented this algorithm in a straight forward manner, as suggested by the description, I was disappointed in the results. It was not want I expected, and not in a serendipitous way.

It works better to leave the square in place and pull the colors from elsewhere into the square. The squares are not uniform, they have different width, height and orientation. So they are actually tilted rectangles. The simple repeat loop did not work well, the last set of cuts were too obvious and a distraction. The repeat steps needed a kind of memory which informed the size and displacement for the next step.

There is a narrow range of rectangle sizes that works. If too large then it just looks like random rectangles. If too small, then the confetti effect disappears and it looks too much like the original smooth color image. Also, it takes a lot of iterations to get the squares chopped up and messy. This one has 80 iterations, although usually 20 to 50 is enough.

After all these adjustments I came up with something close to my original intent.

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