Matthew Chase Whittemore

Fine Art in Node.js

Hi! My name is Matthew Whittemore

I work at Mapbox and tweet as mcwhittemore

Fine Art in Node.js

Tonight we're gonna talk about making fine art in node.js. first we're going to cover some paintings that I've been thinking about for the last while. Then we're gonna scroll through a bunch of generative pictures made mashing up instagrams. Then we're gonna deep dive through the code to make one of the images. Ready?

I don't really know anything about art

I wrote a paper on this once though

That said... I like art

And I make art

So I'm gonna try to teach it a bit tonight.

Javascript included.

For the next bunch of slides I'm gonna show you a bunch of `real` art. To create art we need to have something in mind that we are creating, else is just chaous on canvas

Rembrant loves selfies

The first painting I really liked

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disintegration_of_the_Persistence_of_Memory

I think I liked it for its name as much as its content The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

My favorite Dali now is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_Giraffe

First,
The giraffe galloped past a town in Northern Spain

Where it was but a myth from Africa

Where the people jumped and yelled

And told their children they’d tell their children about this day.

Then one spotted the fire climbing the giraffe’s back

Parents yelled their children home,

Turning their eyes to the sky as newspaper headlines

Jumped from memory to present.

Second came the planes,

Third the bombs.

And no one was left to remember that giraffe

burning,

a pillar of smoke to warn the next town.

When I was luckly enough to take pictures of giraffe's myself - I made this

http://andsowewent.tumblr.com/post/79897653141/a-few-years-ago-i-wrote-a-set-of-poems-about-the

Encountering Andrew Wyeth My interest in art died down after college though and didn't really pick up again until about a year ago when I walked into the national gallery of art and found this

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/andrew-wyeth.html

Andrew Wyeth - Weatherside

Andrew Wyeth - Groundhog Day - the first painting present in my life - hung above our sofa but I didn't know who it was by until there was an Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the Natioanl Gallery.

So I tried to write a poem about it

and ended up searching instagram insteed

If Rembrant could make selfies into art...

and wrote some code - https://github.com/mcwhittemore/cubism/blob/master/works/one/eight-blue/index.js

and made this

Ok. I lie. I made these first

and this

But in the end I got this

Its almost time for lots of code - but I want to point out that like I really don't know art

I'm not sure I know anything about computer science

I just like programing

Sometimes I've called myself a to help make it clear that I'm not a CS person

Poet Programer

Other times I've called myself a maker Maker

now I'm simply human

I say this because I think it easy to not do something because at that point in time you aren't that type of human. I spent the last 4 years burning myself out trying to be not quite who I am. At points, all I knew about myself was that I liked to code, or write poetry or watch scifi shows. Being creative helped me process a bunch and my wife encouraged me to do this continue, but creative somehow become `start a company at night` and not `have fun making something`. I'm still struggling with this, but having a non-product, non-work, just-fun, project has helped alot

Here is some of what I've made.

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