Generative Art with Quil and Processing

I recently read an article on generative art. The space is incredible, and using controlled randomness to generate art seems like an amazing idea. I started looking at Georg Nees’ , and found my way to Processing . The gut instinct is always to look for a Python implementation, but I was unhappy with unweildly most were. I found Quil by chance, and fell in love.

Quil weilds the Processing API in one hand, and Clojure in the other, using some fantastic language abstractions to make generating art a breeeze. I grokked it fairly easily, which resulted in the following pieces; which are simply a few concentric circles (the radii and colors of which follow gaussian distributions).

Clojure code:

(ns gen_art.dynamic
  (:require [quil.core :refer :all])
  (:require [incanter.core :as math])
  (:use [incanter.core :only [$=]])
  (:use [clojure.math.combinatorics :only [combinations cartesian-product]])
  (:use [clojure.pprint])
  (:use [clojure.set :only [union]])
  (:use [clojure.contrib.map-utils :only [deep-merge-with]])
  (:import [org.apache.commons.math3.distribution ParetoDistribution])
  (:import [processing.core PShape PGraphics]))

(defn setup []
  (frame-rate 10))      

(defn draw []
  (color-mode :hsb 360 100 100 1.0)
  (background 0 0 90)

  (def x 500)
  (def y 500)
  (def min-ellipse-rad 150)

  (defn gauss [mean variance]
  (+ mean (* variance (random-gaussian))))

  (doseq [i (range 20)]
    (let [actual-rad (+ min-ellipse-rad (gauss 0 100))]
      (fill (gauss 0 50) (gauss 50 100) (gauss 50 100) 0.3)
      (ellipse 250 250 actual-rad actual-rad)))

  (doseq [i (range 20)]
    (let [actual-rad (+ min-ellipse-rad (gauss 0 100))]
      (fill (gauss 50 100) (gauss 50 100) (gauss 50 100) 0.3)
      (ellipse 750 750 actual-rad actual-rad)))

  (doseq [i (range 20)]
    (let [actual-rad (+ min-ellipse-rad (gauss 0 100))]
      (fill (gauss 100 150) (gauss 50 100) (gauss 50 100) 0.3)
      (ellipse 250 750 actual-rad actual-rad)))

  (doseq [i (range 20)]
    (let [actual-rad (+ min-ellipse-rad (gauss 0 100))]
      (fill (gauss 150 360) (gauss 50 100) (gauss 50 100) 0.3)
      (ellipse 750 250 actual-rad actual-rad)))

  (save "sketch.tif"))

The above code only does the actual drawing. The actual code is best implemented in whatever Quil workflow you setup, mine follows Tyler Hobbs’ very closely. I’m excited to see what else Quil can do. I’m pretty sure ugly concentric circles are the least of it.