The Art

Background

Procedural Abstractions continues a 20-year long exploration of the beauty of mathematics from a non-mathematic, artistic perspective.  It is a new artistic expression that brings to light the power and inherent beauty that mathematics are capable of producing.  The pieces produced by the Procedural Abstraction process are developed and selected to be fitting complements to any setting where versatile, contemporary art can be appreciated. 

Procedural Abstractions are not fractal, photo-realistic, representational or manipulative in nature.  Fractals are infinitely repetitive geometric shapes and photo-realism seeks to virtually create or re-create “reality.”  And, while representational computer graphics present a visual display of mathematical functions, Procedural Abstractions, by comparison, generates aesthetically coherent abstract imagery directly from within the computational power of pure mathematics.  Procedural Abstractions exist in a completely different realm of generative art, one that seeks to create true abstract "paintings."

As a result, Procedural Abstractions produces a wide variety of art pieces that, within a given series, share similar aesthetic characteristics. Different series are driven by various artistic choices which in turn broadening the range of the available styles.

Additionally, the purely abstract nature of this work allows the viewer to experience a wide variety of personal interpretations.

 

Fundamentals

The “Procedure” uses the power of the computer to combine aesthetic decisions with the computational processes of mathematics to produce unique abstract art that transcends the commonly held ideas of computer graphics.

Initially, the designer defines the fundamental aesthetic parameters for the procedure.  These choices guide the general artistic direction for the series of images that will be generated by the procedure.

The resulting images of the process are thus not directly created. The computer interprets the aesthetic choices of the designer, then uses the underlying mathematics to generate the images by itself.  The designer then reviews the resulting images and selects the more significant iterations produced by the process.

This approach produces a wide variety of unique, organic, non-repetitive, aesthetically significant abstract imagery.
 
All Procedural Abstraction images are developed as square-formatted images.  The square format is the most compositionally challenging.  This is due to the fact that this equilateral format provides no implicit motion or structural dynamic inherent in rectangular formats.  This format also provides the widest possible range for both vertical and horizontal cropped rectangular compositions.

This is what happens when a non-math-oriented designer uses math to create art.  Please feel free to explore the sample images in these folios and explore more examples in our Print Shop.