What Does it Take to Make Generative Art Every Week? We Asked Luke Patton.

Luke Patton was never good at traditional art classes in school but, as he wrote on his blog, he “internalized the lessons they taught [him] about practice and improvement.” These lessons didn’t go to waste, however, because eventually, Luke discovered generative art. After taking some coding classes and discovering #plottertwitter, Luke was inspired to create his own generative art — he went through Matt DesLauriers’ course on Creative Coding with Canvas & WebGL which “was a nitro boost to [his] coding abilities” and read Sher Minn’s History of Computer Art which “sent [him] on a deep Wikipedia journey to read about early computer artists.”

“At some point I read Inconvergent’s essay on generative algorithms and it crystallized for me that I needed a structured way to practice,” Luke wrote. That’s when he started his Canvas Cards projects, where he produced 52 cards (one a week) for the entirety of 2019 and posted them into a Glitch project. Luke was also nice enough to talk to me about the project and his process.

Have you ever done a year-long project before this? What was challenging about being that consistent?

I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, but my in senior year of college I presented a final project based on data I had collected about my life, everything that happened each day in 2013. I guess that feels a little different because I was just collecting info in 2013 and all the design and work was compressed into the first couple months of 2014.

To me, the consistency [of the Canvas Cards] was more of a comfort than a challenge cause it distributed the pressure across a known time scale. If I had tried to make 52 cards just in vague bounds of 2019, I think I either would have burned out quickly or procrastinated till the end. Establishing one card per week gave me a good rhythm and let me know how much runway I had to approach any given idea.

Did this project change the way you think about art or change the way you think about your ability to create art?

I think the most accurate way to put it would be that this project happened because of a change in the way I thought about art. Once I was introduced to generative art, it felt like a whole new world was opened up. I drank up a lot of history and theory before I ever really put together any code myself. I think this project definitely matured my understanding of the medium though, in the way that direct experience tends to.

I thought your feelings about personal projects and money were interesting. Can you tell me how you arrived at this perspective? You mention that you "would no longer be doing a project for [yourself] and for a community, [you] would be someone with something to sell." What difference do you think that makes with a personal project?

I can’t remember where I originally heard it but early in my design education the difference between free and $1 was impressed upon me. The introduction of money into any creative process is a multiplier for complexity, and the last thing I was looking for was more complexity.

Almost all the knowledge and resources I used in this project came to me freely, from people who were sharing out of passion and kindness. That’s the spirit that I conceived of the project in, so it felt that remaining non-commercial was important. I really value the non-commercial web as a sort of haven against hustle culture and that’s where I wanted this project to live. I understand the necessity of artists to sell their work and be compensated (I’ve purchased prints and outputs before) but it just didn’t seem right for what I was doing.

When was the first time in your life you remember feeling good about something you created? Could be a doodle, a Lego project, a story you wrote, etc.

I was a little young for the GeoCities boom that I know a lot of internet creators experienced, but I was really involved on a GFX forum. We weren’t like a car, game or fandom dedicated forum but we would create forum signatures for people on those sites. That’s where I really cut my teeth on Photoshop and I would occasionally win our little internal “Sig of the Week” competitions. I think that was the first time I was really involved in a community of creative people and felt good and proud about creating something.

Has programming made you feel like a more creative person?

Absolutely. I think there’s a pretty stereotypical view of programming and people who program as very rigid and strict, which can be true, but the flexibility and potential packed into even a relatively simple library like Processing is unfathomable. I think the ideas I’m able to express with code are as strong as any I’ve put together with traditional design or art tools. And like any good tool, code can be a playground that lets you stretch creative muscles. I believe creativity is a muscle, any exercise you can get makes it stronger.

*Check out Luke's complete Canvas Cards project here and read his really insightf*ul retrospective while you're at it.