Between Worlds: Merging Painting and Programming

examples
#1

Hi everyone!

I created a series of abstract art pieces using openframeworks and oil painting! :smiley:

This was made with my first prototype to make programming more physical and expressive. Trying to use drawing and algorithmic logic in the same context.

I feed in live captures of oil paintings which i then use as source data to run particle simulations with. These use a variation of the boids algorithm made to read colour from an image. Code is here.

I modified OF to be a .dll with dynamic code loading functionality to allow for a fast enough feedback loop necessary to paint and code in the same session - I dev on Windows using VS 2017 so this was tough to figure out :sweat_smile:

I’d love to know your thoughts about the pieces or anything I have mentioned!

Hope you enjoy it :slight_smile:

Stuart_Batchelor_Absence
Stuart_Batchelor_Absence.jpg621×1183 667 KB
Stuart_Batchelor_Impulse-Ash
Stuart_Batchelor_Impulse-Ash.jpg630×630 412 KB
Stuart_Batchelor_Impulse-Azure
Stuart_Batchelor_Impulse-Azure.jpg628×628 549 KB
Stuart_Batchelor_PeaceAndPower
Stuart_Batchelor_PeaceAndPower.jpg621×1183 991 KB
Stuart_Batchelor_Snowfall
Stuart_Batchelor_Snowfall.jpg609×856 936 KB
Stuart_Batchelor_Spire
Stuart_Batchelor_Spire.jpg567×810 739 KB
SurfaceDetail_Stuart_Batchelor
SurfaceDetail_Stuart_Batchelor.jpg621×1172 861 KB

5 Likes
#2

This is beautiful ! ! !!!

1 Like
#3

These are really compelling images. May I ask more about the relationship between the live oil painting input and the particle simulations? Are you isolating circular portions of the oil painting and using those as particles in a particle sim?

1 Like
#4

Cheers ! :slight_smile:

#5

Thank you!
Good question - to isolate certain strokes essentially key a certain colour, say black, and then paint in white or other colours - that black is then used to decide what gets cropped out or not, kind of like green-screening. I then have an image that is just the paint which I then spawn particles off of.

These pics may help:

Hope that answered your question, let me know if you have any more :slight_smile:

#6

Thanks so much for explaining! Very interesting stuff

1 Like
#7

Np. Any time :+1:

#8

Super cool! Do you happen to have a video of the process of how you did it?

1 Like
#9

Thanks! I do not have a video but for my next series I am working on documenting the process, doing more screen recordings and possibly even doing some live-streams.

It’s tricky due to the process being split between painting irl, visual studio coding and then the openframeworks real-time app.

I’ll be posting updates on my instagram if your interested though :slight_smile:

Apart from that the best is the code in the repo i previously posted and the images from my gallery page

Thanks :slight_smile: