29. Technology and Art

Cory Haber is the VP of Technology for Furnished Quarters, a global corporate housing company. But he's also an educated painter. He's interviewed by Erin Allard, a Platform Support Engineer at Heroku, to delve into the effect technology has had on art, and vice versa. For Cory, art is about the intent of the artist; it's a moot point to ask whether anything a computer produces can be considered art. In the end, a human has trained an AI or written the software, and the computer becomes a tool, similar to a camera or a pen.

Engaging in artist practices allows Cory to take a break from the purely logical examinations which programming requires of him. To some, it may be seen as procrastination, but he believes that the best way to solve a problem is to allow your mind to wander of. That's what his current painting practices allows him to do. At the same time, he also follows along on the generative art movement, which takes place primarily on Twitter. There, artists and programmers share their programs that generate art that can be represented on screens or canvases.

The history of generative art goes back to the 60s. For individuals curious to learn more about this practice, he recommends the Processing programming language. Similar to a Jupyter notebook, it's a part-framework, part-application hybrid that works in generating visual arts. He also encourages individuals with no artistic background to just start taking classes on painting or music. No one knows everything about programming when they first start; they learn the skill and become better at it the more time they invest. Art is created under a similar focus.

Links from this episode

Cory has compiled a list of resources with more information on the intersection of technology and art:

Early Generative Artists

• Vera Molnar
• Lillian Schwartz
• Ken Knowlton
• Frieder Nake
• Georg Nees
• Michael Noll

Current Generative Artists and Plotter Artists

• Tyler Hobbs
• Paul Rickards
• Benjamin Kovach
• Anders Hoff
• Matt Deslauriers
• Manuel Gamboa Naon
• Casey Reas (Co-Founder of Processing)
• John Maeda
• Jared Tarbell

AI Artists

• Robbie Barrat
• Mario Klingemann

Frameworks

• Processing
• openFrameworks

Learning Resources

• Art Nome
• The Coding Train
• Daniel Shiffman
• Books on Generative Art
• Manohar Vanga

Influential Artists

• Piet Mondrian
• Sol Lewitt
• Hilma af Klint
• Kasimir Malevich
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Joseph Albers