4x4 Generative Design (with Auto-Illustrator, Java, DBN, Lingo): Life/Oblivion [Paperback]

Adrian Ward (Author), Golan Levin (Author), Lia (Author), Meta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2002 | ISBN-10: 1903450470 | ISBN-13: 978-1903450475 | Edition: 1

"Computers are capable of an unimaginably greater number of things than any specific piece of software might lead one to believe. I believe individual artists should dictate the possibilities of their chosen media and not some big companies like Adobe and Macromedia." —Golan Levin

Tools can control as well as serve. Across the web, pioneering artists and designers are recognising the exhilarating freedom and unparalleled control offered by programming. The 4x4 Project invited four influential and respected artists, renowned for their stunning experiments with code and art, to work together on the theme of "Life and Oblivion".

• Golan Levin – creator of Flong.com
• Adrian Ward – creator of Auto-Illustrator.com and Slub.org
• lia – creator of Turux.org and Re-move.org
• meta – creator of Meta.am

4x4 Beyond Photoshop requires no prior knowledge of programming, only an appetite to control your own creativity. The four authors provide the inspiration and information to allow you to create and to generate using different programming languages including Java, DBN, Auto-Illustrator, Lingo, MAX and Nato. The point is not to follow or to replicate but to mutate, transform, hack and move on.

This book and the accompanying website immerse you in the four phases of the 4x4 process:

• Theory: personal accounts of the creative process, manifestos, diaries, mental sketchbooks, and associated ephemera
• "Life and Oblivion": access to the finished applications online, and artwork from the pieces presented in the book
• Process: detailed, firsthand, technical descriptions of the creation of each piece, along with relevant source files on the web site
• Noise and interference: the four authors discuss the project and mechanically reclaim each other's works, creating beautiful and arbitrary hybrids

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Hotwiring Photoshop with code will kick it into life, or into oblivion. This book shows how designers explore external generative tools then introduce that content into Photoshop - a package with which everyone is familiar. Photoshop is used by designers and artists working in all fields. This book (together with the others in the set) shows how design gurus push the tool beyond its perceived limits. In this book, Photoshop will be used in conjunction with a wide range of different programs and scripting languages - from Lingo rendering engines to java.

About the Author

A bio is not available for this author.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: friendsofED; 1 edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1903450470
• ISBN-13: 978-1903450475
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,706,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars just BRILLIANT!, March 22, 2002

By 

"raf75020" - See all my reviews

This review is from: 4x4 Generative Design (with Auto-Illustrator, Java, DBN, Lingo): Life/Oblivion (Paperback)

In one word : EXCELLENT! In a litlle more words : this book is a perfect realisation of a designer's dream. Each chapter, written by a different author, gives you all the insights and reflexions of the artist upon its work, and the way he/she uses inspiration, and , on the same time, they introduce you to a programming tool in a very clear way by giving a documented example of code.
Lia's introduction to Director/Lingo is amazingly direct, simple and clear and gives a very nice resulting piece of work.
Golan Levin's chapter in very inspirational, he somehow takes the intuitive approach of his former professor John Maeda from MIT, but goes further in explanations. He takes the step between idea and code, giving you a "double-scaled" example : a simpler code in DBN (Deisgn By Numbers), and a more complex and powerfull one in Java. The resulting piece is again brilliant, as is G. Levin.
I do think that there is a strong editorial approach in this book : it's to give each artist the space to express him/herself without the necessity of a global view. In fact, I think this is one of the best aspects : it shows you that there is no "global approach" to generative design. Instead, everyone is playing with their favorite tool, or constructing new tools in order to escape the uniformisation process of digital design.
It is true that some parts may be found on the web, but not everyone can be in direct contact with those artists, so I found their explanations of their own work very inspirational and i think it was a great idea to ask the artists to remix each other's works and to comment on them. (Btw, the reader is also invited to do so, and all code is availlable on the web).

Conclusion : a BRILLIANT and ORIGINAL approach to digital design, and probably one of the most usefull book on this particular matter.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars innovative and original source of inspiration, February 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 4x4 Generative Design (with Auto-Illustrator, Java, DBN, Lingo): Life/Oblivion (Paperback)

An excellent and original book with interesting subject matter. A great source of innovative approaches to experimental image making and design. I found all of the tutorials to be easy to follow and enlightening, especially Lias work with Director. Being able to go "behind the scenes" with one of the creators of Turux.org and see how some of those amazing Shockwave pieces were made is invaluable. The personal essays were all very inspirational and interesting to read as well. This book is highly recommended for those who want to take their artwork into interesting new directions. I hope Friends of Ed makes more art/essay/tutorial books like this in the future because the format is great!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Shovelware publishing from FOE, February 7, 2002

By 

Andrew Otwell "heyotwell" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 4x4 Generative Design (with Auto-Illustrator, Java, DBN, Lingo): Life/Oblivion (Paperback)

I think this book is a great idea, so three stars. ... Here we have yet another collection of chapters by designers who haven't communicated with each other, and apparently don't have a strong editor with an overall vision, so the book doesn't develop an idea throughout. That's fine if you like the rockstar approach, but why not just look at these guys' websites instead?

The problem with this is that there's just nothing new here. Everything here, and I mean everything, is available on the web, especially if you make contact with people and learn from work they've done.

Still, it's nice to see a somewhat unusual topic get a whole book, and Golan Levin is a genius, full stop, so I'm glad he's getting noticed.