kander – Interruptions

  1. The border size is varied (I think that’s a feature of the printing, rather than an intentional concept of the artwork, but it is nonetheless a feature of the work)
  2. The lines are all the same length
  3. The lines are about 1/25 the length of one of the sides of the square
  4. The lines are black
  5. The background is white
  6. The artwork is square
  7. There are spaces where lines do not generate
  8. The number of these spaces varies
  9. Lines do not get cut off by the borders of the page (there are no little amputated lines)
  10. A similar number of lines is generated each time the program runs
  11. The lines are not cut off by the spaces. Rather, they simply do not generate there
  12. Line density is similar in areas where there are not the spaces
  13. It’s almost as though there are spaces where line density is lower, rather than spaces where they specifically don’t generate from
  14. There doesn’t seem to be a specification for the angle at which the lines generate, but they tend to generate to the same angle
  15. The date is written in the bottom
  16. Sometimes the movement in the picture is horizontal, and sometimes it is more vertical
  17. Lines do not necessarily have to intersect with each other

Click in the white space below to start my program!

sketch-60.js

Github Repository Link

I initially noticed that the line placement seems to be based off of distribution, so I went through the p5.js function library looking for functions that could help me with distribution. I eventually decided I should try using random() and randomGaussian() and spent a long time trying to create the gaps by editing the distribution of the first x-coord of the lines. I tried using randomGaussian() to control the value the x-coord increments by each time, and I even tried messing with the angles of the segments. Eventually, I realized editing the properties of the lines wasn’t working well, so I instead defined the white spaces and simply didn’t render any segment whose first point was in that space.

Overall, I think this final strategy worked pretty well. The margins look a little odd, and I feel as though the nature of my white spaces and Molnar’s white spaces are slightly dissimilar. I now appreciate the complex thinking required to make an algorithm behave in a way that implies random accident. It would have been so much easier to simply render the lines to the screen, but that work would be so much more lifeless than Interruptions.

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