Mid-century Modern for the Masses
But, but... why?
I saw a Mondrianizer in the functional language F#. This offended me on aesthetic grounds, in that a functional program should not generate "random" images. Additionally, only Windows users can make any further use of that Mondrianizer. That offended me on ideological grounds.
Acting on my aesthetic sensibilities, I churned out a Mondrian-like picture generator using a dodgy, open source, imperative language, PHP. The very sketchiness that PHP is famous for can be used to great effect in generating "surprising" images. Now you too, can have Art, and generate Art. If you have a PHP-enabled website, put automondrian.phps (PHP that generates the page you're now reading) and mond.phps (which generated the image above) in your htdocs directory, removing the s suffix.
Who Owns The Incredibly Valuable Intellectual Property?
I probably own the copyright on the code in automondrian.php and mond.php. Only a court trial can determine for certain. But hypothetically, who owns the Art generated by mond.php, and appearing above? Does my choice of settings for "mondrianity" entitle me to a copyright? Does your choice? Once again, it looks to me like only a court trial could tell us with any certainty.
We may see just such a court case, albeit with a monkey instead of a program.
Other Mondrianesque Image Generators
- Computer Science class assignment, along with some student examples that are pretty nifty.
- Mondrian in JavaScript, a browser app with setting reminiscent of this page.
- More on Mondrian in JavaScript, eloquent exposition.
- Mondrimat, a browser app that helps you create Mondrianesque Art.
- Auto-Mondrian
- AutoMondrian, also in PHP
- A contest, now, unfortunately, closed.
- A Jackson Pollock program. Not an auto-Mondrian, but mid-Century, for sure.