Max Bill — Zum 80. Geburtstag — A Interactive Composition using P5.js
About the Process
This interactive art was created as a part of Information Visualisation II, a course at NID Bangalore during the second semeter, by Rasagy Sharma. The module focused on generating interactive art pieces using p5.js. Coming from a computer science background, I had a basic understanding of the language and syntax but, this was the first time I was trying out art with code. Combining my love to design to my knowledge with programming languages was a great opportunity for me to push my limits in both the fields.
The course by Rasagy was an amazing refresher. The course gave every individual their space to explore and learn with adequate QnA and learning sessions. We began by creating static art pieces which gradually moved to interactive art, using mouse and keyboard interactions. The final assignment for this module was to recreate an art work by a famous artist and make it interactive in any form. As a part of the final assignment, I have chosen to work on ‘zum 80. Geburtstag’ by Max Bill.
About Max Bill
Max Bill (22 December 1908–9 December 1994) was a Swiss architect, artist, painter, typeface designer, industrial designer and graphic designer, born in Winterthur. As a designer and artist, Bill sought to create forms which visually represent the New Physics of the early 20th century. He sought to create objects so that the new science of form could be understood by the senses: that is as a concrete art. He made spare geometric paintings and spherical sculptures, some based on the Möbius strip, in stone, wood, metal and plaster. His architectural work included an office building in Germany, a radio studio in Zurich, and a bridge in eastern Switzerland.
In 1944, Bill became a professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich. In 1953, alongside Inge Aicher-Scholl and Otl Aicher, he founded the Ulm School of Design (German: Hochschule für Gestaltung — HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school initially created in the tradition of the Bauhaus and which later developed a new design education approach integrating art and science. The school was notable for its inclusion of semiotics as a field of study. The school closed in 1968. Faculty and students included Tomás Maldonado, Otl Aicher, Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, John Lottes, Walter Zeischegg, and Peter Seitz.
About the recreation
The art work I recreated is Zum 80. Geburtstag. The art piece consists of a cyclic pattern of segments inside the 4 quadrants of a square. For my recreation of this art piece and add interaction to it, the following are the parameters I focused on:
- Make the art piece scalable. There should be no restricts in terms of canvas size, orientation, etc. that should effect the painting. The painting must dynamically adjust to the canvas size.
- The interaction must take a generative approach. The interaction should involve addition / subtraction of elements in the artboard and not just stick to movement in elements. This means the art must evolve as people interact with it.
- Every art piece generated from the program must be unique. Along side that, the users must be able to control and customise the composition of the art piece as they will.
- The above 4 points finally add up to the code being as optimised as possible to carry out the requirements. The final object is to generalise the code to such an extent that minor changes in parameters should alter the outcome beautifully, without breaking.
Final Work
Some Postcards
Source Code
P5.js Code: https://editor.p5js.org/karthikeya_g/sketches/RPYkCmDMS
