Tyler Hobbs: an Artist Who Paints with Code - a podcast by Mark McGuinness

This week's guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Tyler Hobbs, a artist who creates stunning images by writing a computer program to generate each new artwork.







Tyler HobbsA few months ago I was talking to a friend who suggested I check out the artwork of Tyler Hobbs, as an example of generative art. It turns out that there’s a subculture of artist and programmers using computer programs to create original art.



It sounded like an interesting idea, but I didn’t have great expectations of the art itself. Then I landed on Tyler Hobbs’ website and I was entranced by what I saw.



There was definitely a futuristic, computerised look and feel to the images, but they also had an evocative, even haunting quality. The atmosphere of the artworks reminded me of some of my favourite ambient and techno music, or science fiction movies like Blade Runner and Metropolis.



I was also intrigued to see that quite a few of the images were marked ‘sold’ and unavailable. Instead of creating an image and printing it multiple times, Tyler is creating one-off original artworks. And when a collector buys the work, Tyler ships the image with a copy of the program used to create it.



The more I looked, the more absorbing the images became. I was also intrigued by Tyler’s writings about generative art and creativity. And questions kept popping into my mind:







How do you make this kind of image?



Why go to the trouble of writing a program instead of drawing or using photoshop to create the images you want?



How do you create such emotionally compelling images by writing computer code?



What can generative art tell us about the future of art?



In the end, I emailed Tyler and asked if he would come on the show, so I could ask him these questions and share the answers with you. He kindly agreed, and gave me a fascinating and insightful interview.



And not only did I learn a lot about Tyler’s artistic process, I also found plenty of things I could relate to in my own practice as a poet.



If you love futuristic art, or if you’re curious about the intersection of technology and human creativity, I’m sure you’ll find this conversation as riveting as I did.



And if you think computer art sounds a bit cold and cerebral, then I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear what Tyler has to say about technology, emotions and creativity in the brave new world of generative art.



You’ll get a lot more out of this interview if you look at some of Tyler’s art as well as listening to him talk, so you can see some of his images here in the show notes and below in the interview transcript, and there are lots more at Tyler’s website TylerXHobbs.com



'Afterwards' by Tyler Hobbs



Tyler Hobbs interview transcript



MARK: Tyler, what exactly is generative art?



TYLER: Generative art can be a little bit tricky to explain sometimes. But kind of the core of generative art is that it's pattern and process based. So in the current day, you're typically going to be creating artwork through a program if you're making generative artwork.



So for myself, my artwork is created entirely through programming. I don't draw things by hand or use any sort of Photoshop or post-editing in any of my work. There's a few exceptions to that. But largely, it's done through custom computer programming. So I sit down and I develop a custom algorithm that will generate an image usually with no input. So it's working from a blank slate. That's the best description of how generative art is typically created these days.



MARK: So there's no direct manipulation like with Photoshop or a mouse or a brush or a scanned images? You're writing lines of code that then generate the image,

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