I really like generative art, or so-called algorithmic art. Basically, it means you take a pattern or a complex system of rules, and apply it to create something new following those patterns/rules.

When I finished my PhD, I got a beautiful poster of where the k-nearest neighbors algorithms was used to generate a set of connected points.

My first piece of generative art.

As we recently moved into our new house, I decided I wanted to have a brother for the knn-poster. So I did some research in algorithms I wanted to use to generate a painting. I found some very cool ones, of which I unforunately can’t recollect the artists anymore:

However, I preferred to make one myself. So we again turned to the work of the author that made the knn-poster: Marcus Volz.

He has written (in R) many other algorithms. And we found that one specifically nicely matched the knn-poster. His metropolis – or generative city:

However, I wanted to make one myself, so I download Marcus code, and tweaked it a bit. Most importantly, I made it start in the center, and I made it run more efficient so I could generate a couple dozen large cities quickly, and pick the one I liked most. Here’s the end result:

And in action, in my living room: