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Lincoln Schatz: Random Access Portraits

Posted by Synthetik on November 4, 2007 at 1:41pm
There's an interesting article on Lincoln Schatz's random access portraits on apple's profiles. His whole process for making portraits is interesting, and i think you can look at it and take some inspiration for things you could do with a single video camera or digital camera and studio artist (as opposed to having to have a translucent cube environment with 30 cameras and 30 mac minis. For example, you could build an image database from a half hour video of your subject (the individual frames) and then make portraits using art mapping in msg evolver or movie brushes in studio artist. Or you could build a PASeq in Studio Artist that would combine random pieces of individual frames into a composite canvas. I think the real message to take home from Schatz's work is that you can create interesting imagery by setting up a random process to create imagery and then combing through the results for the individual images that work.
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Neurons or Pollock?

Posted by Synthetik on November 1, 2007 at 1:53pm
Wired has a nice little article on a new approach to staining neurons with some great natural images that could be mistaken for paintings (like the image below). 1.jpg The image looks like a piece of procedural art you might create in MSG Evolver.
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Chuck Close Documentary

Posted by Synthetik on October 11, 2007 at 4:47pm
There's an interesting documentary of painter Chuck Close playing on the Ovation art cable tv channel this month. chuckclose.jpg Those of you who have played with the MSG Evolver ArtMapper will probably understand why i find his work interesting. Watching the documentary made me realize i should probably pay more attention to diagonal diamond grids for art mapping. MSG Evolver provides some diagonal diamond grid options, but they are adaptive, and having a simple repetitive diamond grid would be a useful addition to the Art Mapper section. The visual system's spatial frequency perception falls off at diagonal spatial frequencies (you can't see them as well as a normal rectangular grid of the same dimensions), so it's perhaps not surprising why Close uses the diagonal grid so much. There's a really nice example in the documentary of a painting that uses a circular tiling which is quite nice, another grid option i should add at some point in the future. I like the adaptive grids a lot for image database photo mosaic art mapping. But there is a visual simplicity to a simple regular grid that is really appealing in some situations. One way to think about it is that a regular grid is not lighting up as many neurons when you see it, as opposed to an adaptive grid that is going to be firing off many more spatially tuned channels in the visual system.
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Posted by Synthetik on October 10, 2007 at 3:46pm
The New York Times has an good article and accompanying slide show of some paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. arcislide3.jpg Some visual inspiration for art-mapping in MSG Evolver or working with alpha masked movie brushes in Studio Artist from the 1500's.
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such a learning curve ...

Posted by Tiffany Gordon on September 16, 2007 at 12:19am
Gosh! There is so much to learn. I think an artist's technical knowledge could go a long way. I feel my pieces a little amateurish right now, and so want to get better. Must keep persevering! The possibilities are seemingly endless ..... I must get through all those tutorials. Off to Canada (West coast) next Sunday - so excited to meet a new place and explore new spaces. Autumn is definitely upon us here in the Isles this weekend. Raining, windy and with a distinct Christmasy feel. I love this time of year and could not live without the seasons. Best wishes to you all. :-)
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Rutt Ettra Simulations

Posted by Synthetik on September 15, 2007 at 5:02pm
There's an interesting video i've attached below that shows off a demonstration of the Rutt-Etra raster analog video synthesizer. I thought it would be fun to emulate it in Studio Artist, so i added a new MSG processor that can be used to simulate the Rutt-Etra style effects. Here's an example of what i mean: videoSynthEx1.jpg A lot of what the Rutt-Etra seemed to be about was interactive scaling and displacement mapping effects driven from analog user adjustments. By running the scaling below 0 you can flip an image axis. So modulating parameters like this over time using Temporal Generators in MSG can lead to some effective animating effects that are pretty simple to generate. There are probably other interesting visual analog video synth effects lost in time that would be fun to emulate, so feel free to offer suggestions if you have any for other analog video features you would like to see. Analog video feedback has been discussed recently on the forum so i think we have that one covered. that's also pretty easy to do in MSG Evolver today with an iSight camera and live video preview mode.
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Generative Art

Posted by Synthetik on September 12, 2007 at 2:42pm
I stumbled upon a good description of generative art i'm plagiarizing and quoting below for people interested in thinking through different approaches to creating generative art in Studio Artist and MSG Evolver: "Generative art is a widely used artistic method inserting an automated system between the artist and the artistic expression. In a well-cited text, Philip Galanter formulates the following definition: 'Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.' (From 'What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory', Philip Galanter, New York University, 2003.) Even though generative art is often reduced to merely a branch of software art, Galanter's definition proposes a view that does not restrict generative art strategies to its digital forms. There are many traditions for basing art works on systems, procedures, and instructions in most fields of art. John Cage, Yoko Ono and many other conceptual artists have worked with procedural and instruction-based work. The defining trait of generative art is rather that the artist establishes a system, which can generate a number of possible forms rather than one single finished form. The role of the artist is to construct, initiate or merely select the frame of procedures for the generation of possible expressions." One message to take away from above is that there are a lot of different approaches to generative art. The computer could be doing all the work, while the artist just makes aesthetic choices to move the process along. Or the notion of generative could really be a process of working, where the artist is more hand on in creating and working with the actual imagery, but following a generative recipe or formula of steps to generate the final finished work. An example of the former would be working with directed evolution in MSG Evolver. An example of the later could be working with combinations of different automatic assisted drawing paint presets in Studio Artist to build up a finished piece. Another example that might fall into the later category would be building a custom Paint Action Sequence in Studio Artist, and then running that on different source images. A more free second example would be hand painting with paint presets that have an automatic component. You're driving the engine in that situation, but the paint itself is making decisions that are going to influence your work over time. In all these example the computer really sits in some kind of a feedback loop with the artist. The feedback can be pretty analytical (like in the directed evolution or custom PASeq approaches), or it can be very dynamic and fluid in the case of hand drawing with intelligent paint presets. Another generative art example useful for making moving art is to hand draw a series of paintings and then use Studio Artist's intelligent keyframing features to build a procedural animation from the series of hand drawn images. The artist is extremely tightly involved in the initial image creation and then totally removed from the actual moving animation part of the final piece. Part of the design goals for Studio Artist is to create an environment you can use in a personal way to create your art. Some people are going to gravitate to more automatic approaches while others would prefer more hand on approaches. Rather than lock you into a specific way of working, we're trying to build a flexible environment where you can try different approaches to creating artistic imagery or animations.
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Harry Smith's Films

Posted by Synthetik on September 9, 2007 at 11:53am
I was not familiar with Harry Smith's film work, but saw a few examples in an interesting show on Ovation last night called Weird America, which was a concert tribute-documentary on the american folk music series that Harry Smith released on Folkways Records that influenced a lot of musicians over the years (as well as documented music from a period of time in american history that was almost lost in world war 2 when they melted 78 records for the shellac). But his abstract film work is really interesting, especially considering the time period it was made it. I'd like to think Harry would have been a Studio Artist user if it had been available at the time. Anyway, here's an example of his work below for those interested:
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Piggy Particles

Posted by Thor Johnson on March 25, 2024 at 4:26pm

Hi, here is a new video, lots of MSG (background layer) and MSG generation path starts along with Time Particles in the paint synth, the "Piggy" figure I made in ZBrush and then animated in Blender, with embedded alpha channel, then took into Studio Artist and made into several different kinds of Movie Brushes. Several layers composited together in Blender. Music made with Bespoke Synth and my Shenai. If anyone has any questions about how it was done I'd be happy to explain more.…

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The one that got away

Posted by craig deeley on November 16, 2023 at 3:11pm

A capture of a PasEq playback (all I had left after a crash) I didn't save the over sized Paint Synth Presets that I was adjusting and testing... But I did save the PAsEq. This would be what…

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Thor Johnson commented on Les Wagstaff’s status
"Cool, thanks, I have used Discord for Midjourney, it took a little getting used to, but I get it now."
Apr 18
Les Wagstaff liked Paul Perlow's profile
Apr 16
Thor Johnson commented on Thor Johnson’s status
"To clarify, I did not make this using 3 layers by using the Layers window in Studio Artist, each layer was processed seperately and then put together and exported as a movie in Blender."
Mar 11
Working with Source .png Images – Transparent Backgrounds via Studio Artist AI

Working with Source .png Images Turning the alpha channel on for transparent .png backgrounds When using .png source images with transparent backgrounds, you will need to set Canvas > Selection > Set to > Source Alpha and then Check Mask…

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Jan 11, 2023
Dual Paint Mode Video Explainer via Studio Artist AI

Basics of the Dual Paint Mode, Concepts and How to Create Your Own Dual Paint Presets For More Information on Dual Paint please see this DUAL PAINT POST   For More Information DUAL PAINT POST

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Apr 5, 2022
Erasing the Canvas via Studio Artist AI

How to Erase the Canvas To erase the canvas choose the Eraser Icon at the top of the Interface or choose Canvas > Erase to See this Post for more detailed information on the canvas eraser options.  

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Apr 4, 2022
Preset Management Video via Studio Artist AI

Everything You Need to Know about Studio Artist Presets and Preset Management  

The post Preset Management Video appeared first on Studio Artist…

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Apr 4, 2022
Resizing the Canvas via Studio Artist AI

Resizing the Canvas Please see this tip on Resizing the Canvas And how to Resize the Canvas for High-Resolution Print

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Apr 4, 2022
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