(2016) Interactive Neural Network Art
43 points
3 days ago
| 2 comments
| otoro.net
| HN
alook
23 hours ago
[-]
I love this work by Otoro / David Ha.

For come context, this uses a technique called CPPN’s (compositional pattern producing networks), where the inputs are (x, y, sqrt(x^2 + y^2)) and then there are several neural net layers with different activation functions and randomly initialized weights. It actually resembles the optical physics of light reflecting through glass (which explains why it sometimes looks like light reflecting through a gem).

Otoro wrote some great blog posts on this:

https://blog.otoro.net/2016/03/25/generating-abstract-patter...

https://blog.otoro.net/2015/07/31/neurogram/

https://github.com/hardmaru/cppn-tensorflow

reply
lawlessone
20 hours ago
[-]
>It actually resembles the optical physics of light reflecting through glass (which explains why it sometimes looks like light reflecting through a gem).

Is this related in any way to how Nvidias NeRF's work?

reply
dimatura
18 hours ago
[-]
Yeah, if you look at the original NERF paper (which is not by Nvidia btw) they cite CPPNs as prior work.
reply
byearthithatius
18 hours ago
[-]
At the risk of sounding like an idiot. What even is this? Is there a purpose? It looks just like random pixel generation to me. There is no explanation anywhere I can find on a "purpose" or "motivation".
reply
Legend2440
17 hours ago
[-]
Who says art needs a purpose?

It makes abstract patterns, some of which you may find pretty. It’s similar to other algorithmic art dating back to the 60s.

reply
tartoran
16 hours ago
[-]
Art doesn't necessarily have a purpose other than being inspiring and anything could be inspiring to some people. But art also has something to do with the human experience, with a process that the artist finds and sticks to, something that teaches them something back, it could be something about themselves etc.
reply