Week 10 – Generative Art

For this week, I was more interested in how I could use TouchDesigner in more of a stationary form in creating generative art.

I continued in my exploration of Elekktronauts’s videos. This one was fun because it showed how to create “hand-drawn lines”. From there I went on and gave it my own spin. Literally.

Throughout this, I have become more comfortable with using instancing (TouchDesigners version of cloning) and have found that my coding lessons have come in handy!

This has definitely been one of my favorite tutorials/tricks that I have learned how to do.

Once again, I did another tutorial by my favorite Touch guy. While this is also an audio-reactive tutorial, what I was most intrigued over was the end result.

The sound you input creates this audio spectrum piece of art. I think it looks beautiful and it just makes me think about how real-time visualizations can have a lasting imprint without it being generated all the time.

Thinking about it in terms of my final project, I want to create something that my audience can experience in real-time, but have something to take with them afterward to remember the experience. The easiest way to achieve that is turning my visuals into generative art by taking stills of the experience.

Like I thoroughly enjoyed Kevin Zhu’s notch tutorials, Bileam Tschepe is my favorite TouchDesigner creator.

This visual was just a little experiment I did for another class. We were creating mock-ups and I thought it would be fun to try it to do it in TouchDesigner.

It was fun, but also extremely challenging. One thing I have not fully figured out is how to composite properly. I am not sure if Touch is capable of doing it the way I want to. I have been trying to create these layers as if it was a photoshop file where I can stack one thing on top of another. It is now something that I am aiming to understand more because I belive it is possible.

Another thing I have actively been doing as well is reading the “TouchDesigner Handbook“, which is just an unofficial intro to the program. It has been very helpful as it has introduced me to concepts I had not yet discovered. The TouchDesigner wiki site also is a GREAT resource and I have used it often whenever I am coding in the program.

Unlike with Notch, quite a lot of coding is done here if you want to fully use all of TouchDesigner’s capabilities. I am still continuing my journey to learn how to code but now that I have the basics down, I can see how useful it is for TouchDesigner.

One thing I have not had a chance to explore is GLSL. I think that I need to do more reading about it first before I try to dive headfirst into it just by using the program. I could probably have spent the whole semester studying just that but I am satisfied with how my TouchDesigner learning path is going.