Web of Lines
Pulling from the concept of Conditional Design, in which the “process is the product,” our Interactive Design class created brief sets of instructions to generate pieces of art. For my instructions, I chose to keep it simple as to create a system which resulted in different works that clearly belonged in a series. My instructions reads as follows:
- Using a dark, neutral color, create 3 lines on a page, varying in length & angles. They must not connect.
- Using a bright, vibrant color, create 9 points across your canvas. At least 2 points must be near corners of your canvas.
- Continuing to use your new color, connect each point to 3 extremes (endpoints) of your initial 3 lines.
This set of instructions can be executed in a digital or analog form. Below is an example of how I executed the instructions using Adobe Illustrator.
These instructions were distributed to our classmates in order to see how our instructions could be interpreted. By and large, the results were somewhat consistent in the sense that the results of the instructions were webs of tesserae.
While technically not an error, it was interesting to see how people interpreted the word “point.” While I went in the route of making my points barely noticeable by the end, many others decided to make them very large and visible. In addition, there were no instructions regarding the thickness of the lines, so while some pieces like mine featured thick lines, others’ were very faint.
An error I was shocked to observe was the amount of lines people would sometimes draw from the points. Part of the issue may have been using math-specific language such as “extremes” which may or may not be retained from grade X geometry. Again, there was still a web of networks ultimately, but they were quite busier than I anticipated. Of course, these could potentially be correct if I chose to change the directions to “connect each point to at least 3 extremes (endpoints) of your initial 3 lines.”
