[syndicate] New work: Autodrawn

[Pall Thayer]

Hi Barbara,
I'm glad you like the piece. Of course, the whole thing is centered 
around the Kraftwerk - Autobahn theme but that's actually just something 
that happened along the way. For quite some time, I've been intrigued 
with these internet traffic cameras that can be found all over. I lived 
in Minneapolis in the US for a few years and after leaving there I 
discovered that the Minnesota department of transportation has these 
live traffic cameras and I went through them to sort of re-live the 
city. But as I didn't have a car while I was there, the traffic cameras 
painted a very different picture of the city than what I knew. As a 
bicycler/pedestrian I experienced the freeways as a bit of a nuisance. 
Sometimes you had to go out of your way to get to the other side, they 
were noisy, polluted and dangerous. But when you view them with the 
internet between you, they become sort of beautiful in a way. Almost 
like intricate sculptures. So my choice of images ended up being about 
aesthetic value more than anything else. For instance, the Riverside 
Expressway in Brisbane (http://www.itsq.com.au/webcam/images/mecure.jpg) 
is really interesting in an abstract visual way. The contrasting curving 
lines and straight lines, the depth provided by the multiple levels of 
traffic and the multitude of light posts makes for a really interesting 
excercise in drawing. Another interesting one is in Phoenix, Arizona 
(http://www.az511.com/Images/cameraimages/cameras/camera013.jpg). This 
camera has alternating views but most of them equally interesting. I'm 
sure that someone with an eye for the visual had something to do with 
the positioning of these cameras. Again, it's the interplay between 
straight and curved lines, stark contrasts and a really nice sense of 
depth. Other images were chosen just because they're such typical 
highway scenes, like this one in Sweden 
(http://www.trafiken.nu/Sthlm/bilder/225.JPG). It's very similar to the 
highway scene on the original Autobahn album cover 
(http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000007U6V.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg).

I spent a lot of time on getting the traced images to resemble pencil 
sketches. What tracing programs look for in images is color changes. So 
the first step was figuring out how many different colors to allow the 
program to look for. The detail of the end result depends on this. More 
colors = more detail. I ended up going with 5 colors. The tracing 
program produces an SVG file where it defines the colors of the shapes 
and whether or not lines and shapes have fills. Through a bunch of 
experimenting I ended up putting a semi-transparent gray fill on 
everything and a semi-transparent line around everything as well. This 
produces shades of varying darkness when things overlap, just as would 
happen in a pencil drawing. But one of the really big steps towards 
getting it to resemble a pencil sketch was varying line thickness. It's 
actually just done at random but it brings the drawing to "life". I 
remember when I was studying drawing this was a big issue. "PAINT with 
line!"

One of the really interesting things about the computer doing the 
drawing is the total disregard for what's being drawn. Familiarity is 
actually one of the things that makes drawing difficult. It causes 
people to draw things that aren't there. You might be sketching a house 
that you're looking at and find that you've drawn more of the roof than 
you can actually see just because you know what a roof looks like and 
you know it's there even though you can't see it. So the computer is 
able to give us a very unique rendition of a sketched car because the 
computer has no idea what a car looks like. It won't emphasize the 
typical things that define a car like wheels. I really like some of the 
cars that show up in the drawings.

Barbara Lattanzi wrote:
> Hi Pall.
> 
> This time it worked, very well.  I am impressed by the project and 
> wonder about about your choice of landscape imagery (images of place 
> rather than, for example, imagery that would suggest a story).  I do 
> like the landscape imagery, though.  I think that there is a subtle 
> comic effect too when the computer gives equal attention and visual 
> weight to every part of the drawing ... (that approach is in contrast to 
> the usual understanding of drawing as a process of mental dialogue - 
> resulting in a set of marks that is based on a visual interplay between 
> selected areas of actual detail and larger areas of marks where detail 
> is only suggested... a lot to expect of a computer!)
> 
> Barbara Lattanzi
> 
> 
> 
>> best r.
>> Pall
>>
>> Barbara Lattanzi wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Pall.
>>> This project starts with some imagery appearing towards the bottom of 
>>> the window and looks interesting but it quickly crashes my Firefox 
>>> browser (on Windows XP, with Java installed).
>>> Just letting you know.  Maybe others are having a similar problem.
>>> Barbara Lattanzi
>>>
>>>
>>> At 05:57 PM 5/7/2005, you wrote:
>>>
>>>> Autodrawn: Sketching landscapes seen through my windows
>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/autodrawn
>>>>
>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
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> 
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