Computational art

Are you a mathematician? A computer scientist? A programmer? An engineer? Or maybe just someone who really likes exact sciences? In this case you are reading the right article, here you will discover the hidden artist who lives inside you.

If you are a member of any category mentioned above, then chances are you haven't been fond of art during your life and probably doesn't have talent for it. After all, you must think "what problems of the world would be solved by paintings and sculptures?", you are partially right, arts do not do much good in leveraging the resources of the planet for the betterment of humankind, nor can they help you answer questions such as "what is the shortest route between my house and my favorite pub?".

However art is a part of human nature and culture, it is the demonstration of our creativity, which in turn is what allowed us to come up with each and every form of science and technology, which basically means both the painter and the mathematician have to use the same special trait that makes us humans: the ability to imagine something that does not exist (yet).

Now that you know every computer scientist has something in common with every artist (apart from the fact that both end with the letters "tist") perhaps you can tap into your dormant artistic skills, however preserving your mathematical nature.

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the beauty of numbers, equations, engines, circuits, algorithms and all other inventions which are not regarded as art? Perhaps you have been doing art your whole life and you just didn't know about it.

Let's use our programming skills to make artworks with our computers, after all your computer is a tool of creation, you can use it to create software that do anything you can imagine (almost), so why not create software that produce a beautiful artwork on the screen?

Let me give you an example, think of the Sierpinski gasket, it is nothing more than a simple recursive algorithm which can be implemented with less than 50 lines of code and yet it is able to produce such a beautiful and stunning image full of impressive geometric patterns and relations.

Here is the link to a code I have written which draws the Sierpinski gasket (the one from the picture above) on the screen: https://github.com/MuriloMir/Sierpinski-gasket-algorithm.

I personally love fractals, I find symmetry and geometric patterns beautiful, which is why I like software that draw shapes similar to the example mentioned above.

Nowadays there are software designed specifically to create artworks, they allow you to set up the parameters and the algorithm and then you just press play and let the software work and display amazing moving images on the screen. Here is a link to an example: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckwcra1OpER/.

If you like to play with LEDs and electronics, if you like to solder stuff, then you could very well build your own array of LEDs to produce some very cool visual effects, I've seen people doing that and if you are creative enough you can do something unbelievable, LEDs are awesome.

I hope this article will inspire you to unleash the artist inside you.