An method for "drawing" a target image randomly, over time, using OpenGL shaders, in the manner of Borges' character Pierre Menard.
Full Description
The method employed to produce these images is based on Menard's fictional attempt to re-create the Quixote. The images were drawn using OpenGL shaders. Shaders exploit the processing power of modern graphics cards to perform loads of calculations much faster than possible using a computer's preoccupied CPU.
The program draws random images in random places. After each iteration, it compares the image it has just produced with the "ideal" image it wishes do create (its Don Quixote, if you will). If the drawn image has grown closer to the ideal, the iteration is kept; if not, it is thrown away.
Ordinarily, this would be a horribly inefficient way to draw an image. In fact, one can never possibly create the original image — only draw ever-so-slightly closer.
In some ways, it resembles the old hypothesis of infinite monkeys rewriting Shakespeare on infinite little monkey typewriters. This is what I find so poetic about this whole exercise: the sensation of stumbling haplessly toward infinity, knowing full well that I will never get there, because I have yet to evolve further than a monkey.
Pierre Menard phrases it much better than I can:
“My undertaking is not difficult, essentially,” I read in another part of his letter. “I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.”
Work metadata
- Year Created: 2015
- Submitted to ArtBase: Thursday Jan 1st, 2015
- Original Url: http://omegra.net/portfolio/menard.html
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Work Credits:
- mfargo, primary creator
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Artist Statement
"He did not want to compose another Quixote—which is easy—but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Miguel de Cervantes."