Mixed Media in Evolutionary Art

by Jordan Maslen
Supervisor: Brian Ross

"Sunset" by J. Maslen.

Mixed media in the real world involves the creation of works of art that creatively combine a variety of media on the canvas, for example, watercolour, acrylic paint, and photographs. We present an evolutionary art system that implements a digital version of mixed media. A genetic programming system uses a language that renders different digital effects on a canvas. Each rendered effect takes the form of an ``art object'', and the tree defines a set of art objects that together comprise a final rendered image. Available effects include procedural images (textures), image filters, and bitmaps. An art object is rendered onto the canvas via a pre-defined mask shape, which can range from simple geometric shapes such as circles or squares, to complex paintbrush strokes and paint splatters. Fitness evaluation measures the pixel-by-pixel colour distance between a rendered canvas and an input target image, which acts as a compositional guide for rendered images. Various runs of the system have produced an interesting variety of stylized, mixed-effect results, often appearing as abstract ``glitchy'' interpretations of target images.

Downloads and publications

Mixed Media in Evolutionary Art, Jordan Maslen, MSc Thesis, 2021.
"Mixed Media in Evolutionary Art", J. Maslen and B. J. Ross,
IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), 2022.

Back up: http://www.cosc.brocku.ca/~bross/