I am running out of words. I try to say something interesting, rather than just stating the obvious.

I am trying out different palettes, and mostly working on the overall shapes. More large waves and swirls. Most of the confetti / chopping is low volume, small displacement, with small areas of high mixing.

Organic Colors #3

Could almost be a village and foothills.

Organic Colors #2

Sometime the quiet colors just work. This one starts with an overall impression of gentle waves or hills. Then as you look closer you see the chopped color blocks. But now they are slightly different hues and shades. The individual pieces of confetti does not stand out as it does with a palette of bright primary colors.

Organic Colors #1

Ok, another subtitle, even after I said I would not do that.

At an art gallery, the paintings, especially the old masters are almost always muted unsaturated colors and limited palettes. There may be a boring explanation for this, the colors faded over time, or that was the only paint available to the artist. I like that it was the artist's choice, and that it shows remarkable confidence and restraint.

I like palettes with high contrast black and white, and with saturated primary colors. Art school would say that I overdo it. However, compared to most modern art on the internet, I think show much constraint. Sometimes I like to get a little outside my comfort zone, and work with muted palettes. If nothing else, just for variety, but also as exercise to avoid letting the bright colors become a crutch.

White Desert #4

White Desert #3

Why the two titles? I want to keep the classification by the main algorithm, what I have been calling Confetti. The current subset are clearly related, a high degree of mixing and mess, partially bleached away with a mostly white palette. But if I start grouping by core algorithm plus palette plus some kind of entropy measure, well that gets too much to keep track of. I may tackle that later, but today I am too lazy.

White Desert #2

This one suggests an aerial image of an alien planet.

White Desert #1

The Confetti algorithm and its variations are designed to transform an otherwise clean and simple image into something messy and chaotic. I mentioned in Confetti #10 that as I was trying different variations the results were too messy. Imagine the lower left here being the entire image. I switched to an almost all white palette, leaving just enough "dirt" to keep it interesting. It provides a nice contrast to the denser mess on the left.

One more in the minimalist geometric abstraction detour.

I have been comparing pixel-first and object-first algorithmic art, as well as making comparisons to fractals. As with fractals, a pixel coordinate is converted into a complex number then through a series of calculations on that number, a color is determined. Because of that, like fractals, you could say that this image is infinite, is extends forever is every direction, and this is a view of one rectangle. You can pan and zoom to find other interesting area. I said "you could say that", I consider the bounding rectangle to be an essential part of the image / algorithm. But that is just semantics.

When I say "fractal like" in this case I mean specifically escape-time fractals, the 'normal' kind, not the ifs fractals or flame fractals I mentioned yesterday.

Not much to say today, obviously, bigger and fewer objects.

I already had program code for pixel first algorithmic art for the fractal art. So it was and easy choice for the first step into algorithmic art. Not all fractal art is created with a pixel-first design. Ifs fractals and flame fractals are types of fractals that are created object-first.

I am still using the messy algorithm I described yesterday, Confetti #10. I greatly reduced the number of squares, but kept them small, and removed the requirement that they fill the canvas, while painting the untouched areas white. The big step is the last one, less is more.

This is a side trip. I have plans to explore minimalist geometric abstraction in the future. I did not expect to approach it from this direction. It was a nice surprise to find it here.

I defined two types of algorithmic in Confetti #9. So far I have been using a pixel-first algorithm. It will be easier to work on geometric abstractions with an object-first design.

Floating squares.

I wanted to add some independent floating tiles to the image. This proved to be much more difficult that I thought it would be. I will spare you the details, the bottom line is I have been modifying the program / algorithm all along. Experienced programmers know what happens when a program goes through a long series of modifications and enhancements without a cleanup and refactor step, it becomes fragile and unmaintainable. I am at that state now. Often a change does not have the intended results. Fortunately my program is just painting pixels on screen is it not controlling a life and death or even business critical situation.

I am pleased with this one, but I decided to skip several other similar images I had queue up. I plan on returning to this idea once I clean up the program and it does what I want it to do.

What are the different types of computer art? I tried to research that questions, and I was not happy with what I found. Not that the descriptions were wrong, just not what I was looking for. I just want to say that these images are "pixel first algorithmic art".

So, let's make up a simple top level classification. As with similar classifications, it is just an exercise, it does not really matter.

Interactive, or computer assisted art. The user interactively tells the computer what to do. Think of the old MS Paint and similar programs. You tell the computer to put a circle here and a line there as you build up your image. Photoshop is a much more sophisticated example of the same basic process.

Algorithmic art, the computer, via an algorithm or program decides where to paint the circles and lines.

I propose this classification base on process not outcome. You can draw a circle with a mouse in paint, or write a program to draw the same circle. In theory, anything that can be produced by one method can also be produced by the other. But in practice there are clear differences, a human would never have the patience to replicate the precision of an algorithm, and it is very difficult to reproduce a human's free mouse movements with an algorithm.

Now I want to subdivide, algorithmic art. Let's call it object first and pixel fist.

Object first algorithmic art. The program decides where to place objects on the screen, then determines which pixels are affected, and colors those pixels appropriately. If the algorithm want to generate a blue line from point A to point B, it figures out the coordinates for the screen pixels lie on the line and colors them blue.

Pixel first algorithmic art. The algorithm starts with pixel coordinates x,y, and uses those to color the pixel.  Again this is definition not process. You can draw the same blue line pixel first, just ask a slightly different question, "does pixel x,y lies on the line from A to B, if so color it blue".

Again, in theory, everything you could create with one method, you could also create with the other. But in practice, the choice of object-first or pixel-first leads to distinctly different results. Everything I have posted so far, and for the foreseeable future, is pixel-first.

At this point, any description seems like stating the obvious. Bigger squares, less chopping, 50% of the canvas is left untouched.

I use the same program, a program I wrote, for both the fractal and the algorithmic art displayed here.

You cannot just sit down and write a program to create an image. Well, you could but it would quickly become a chore and much less fun. There is a lot of mundane overhead beyond the art-algorithm itself. The program needs to know how to color pixels on the screen. My program provides a work area with I create and explore with smaller images. Then when something is ready, it creates a larger, anti-aliased image to publish. It categorizes the image, and saves it to disk. It also saves all the formulas I write for later reuse. I can quickly change parameters for a formula and generate a new image without recompiling. When the code/program part of a formula changes, it compiles the new code without leaving the program.

It is like having a studio with paints, brushes, drop cloth, and with a blank canvas set up and waiting. I tried to design my program like that.

This fractal / confetti hybrid works much better. The fractal shape is well hidden. (There is a period 6 branch point to the left of center, the branches gently spiral counter clockwise.)

Here is another fractal / confetti hybrid. This works better because the fractal part is deemphasized. You probably recognized the dark potion as a tendril in a typical fractal with smaller branches off to the sides.

Although, in this case, while an improvement over the previous, I think it just adds unnecessary complexity. Layering the confetti mixing algorithm over a simple collection of circles, squares and lines works equally as well, if not better.