Abstract Identities

The Studio Entry ceremony at the National Institute of Design, is conducted for the incoming batch by their respective discipline seniors. As a fun exercise , I tried exploring Generative art , with the idea of making something unique for each junior.

Idea

How would a face change to reflect one's details ??

Generative Art technically refers to art that stems as a whole or inpart from an autonomous system.The autonomous system here being an algorithm that could map certain variables onto a canvas, using a user defined key. The goal was to generate an artwork that is unique for each kid, although it belongs to the same parent family.

Generative Identity Design is a concept that stems from Generative Art, wherein the identity system for a brand affords for variations in its depiction. Rather than having a set predefined identity mark, it is generated algorithmically for all users in system.

Dataset

A glimpse of the datasheet that was filled by the juniors. Apart from the standard variables such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Date of birth
• Birth place (later mapped with their lat, long).

We also chose some variables to look at their work and hobbies:

• Work Experience
• Hobbies (later split into Indoor v/s Outdoor Hobbies)

Concept Sketches

Thoughts and process for the same would be avaliable soon

Algorithm

• Using the concept sketches, a basic key was developed mapping the various variables onto unique patterns.
• Load the necessary data table and svg shapes onto variables in your code .
• Begin reading the data table rowwise, getting the row no. in a variable. This will be used further to extract and map all user data into variables.
• Since each student's artwork must be stored in a different PDF, use beginRecord() and endRecord() functions for doing so. More details in references
• The variables were further marked as defined in the key above. Most of these are mappings are direct (the code has been commented to reflect the same).
• The names of the students are also depicted in the code. The numerals below reflect the alphabet positions (derived from the ASCII values).

One of the interesting mappings in the artwork, hobbies was mapped slightly differently. The indoor-outdoor hobbies have been mapped in the respective areas of the circle. The key being, the eliipses for hobbies were measured from the shape's edge (using radius as a parameter to measure).

Generative Renders

Tools

• Processing: Used to generate the artwork with the aid of several existing functions in there.

  • beginRecord(), endRecord(): Generating individuals PDFs for the students.
  • map(): Mapping lat long of birthplace to cartesian co-ordinates.
  • arc(): Mapping date and month of birth to the arcs on a clock.
  • pushMatrix(), popMatrix(): Shifting the origin to required positions for mapping shapes.

• Illustrator: Design the glyphs and export as svgs. Assemble the final generative artworks.

To do

• Explore noise() for mapping texture onto the surface.

References

• Record function
• More functions referred from the Processing Library