ART HISTORY & PRACTICE
The Mind in the Cave -- David Lewis-Williams
Fascinating account of the shamanistic and socially divisive birth of art during the upper palaeolithic. While some of the material is now dated (e.g. the argument of non-admixture of sapiens and neanderthals) it offers an understanding that art has inherently been an act of meaning-making since its outset.
: T&H
Ways of Seeing -- John Berger
A swift read on the basics of the Marxist lens of image-viewing. It's a seminal text that, like most Marxism, shines a provocative light on a reductive explanation.
: Penguin
{Elements,Underworlds} -- Stephen Ellcock
Luscious, eye-opening artistic collections of world imagery on esoteric subjects. They serve as real references for symbolic and archetypal imagery in art. : Elements
Éditions Marguerite Waknine
Tremendous little collection of cahiers. Great range of material.
: site
ARTISTS
dumbdataguy
Generative and data artist producing thought-provoking abstract visualisations. I particularly love that this isn't aiming to demonstrate factual information but to be playful and aesthetic.
: insta reddit
Kenny Vaden
Makes really elegent visual art with the R programming language. A Master of his craft.
: site
Frank Force (KilledByAPixel)
What strikes me most are his beautiful generative comics of planetary, which he generously has an excellent write-up about.
: write-up
Zancan
Creating 'figurative-generative' artworks, Zancan's images fill the space with beautiful generative flora and landscaping. Stunning stuff.
: verse
INDIVIDUALS
Idiomdrottning
Sandra's website is generally just an excellent place of eclectic text and visual art pieces.
: site (also on gemini)
LITERATURE
Conte du Tsar Saltan -- Pouchkine, illustrated by Ivan Bilibine (BnF Éditions)
A large-format edition, translated by Henri Abril, and the first time Bilibine's 1906 illustrations have been published in France. Very beautiful.
: BnF Éditions
The End of Mr Y -- Scarlett Thomas
A novel built around a cursed book by a fictional author, Lumas, and a place called the Troposphere.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion -- Yukio Mishima (trans. Ivan Morris)
The story of Mizoguchi, the young acolyte who burns down the Kinkaku-ji.
: Penguin Random House
TECHNE
Genetic Algorithms in Elixir -- Sean Moriarity
Excellent technical literature and an eye-opener for me on how well Elixir's approach (and the underlying BEAM) are well suited to this 'scientific' approach to computing, demonstrating further the field's woeful dependency on Python. This remains a tool I am still exploring in some generative art pieces.
: O'Reilly
Introduction to Information Retrieval -- Manning, Raghavan & Schütze
The north star text for search-lovers. Also free.
: book site
The Soul of Erlang and Elixir -- Saša Jurić
Its a talk rather than a book that says everything I could ever want to say about programming on the BEAM and the words instead come from an actual expert.
: talk
The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants -- Prusinkiewicz & Lindenmayer
L-systems from the horse's mouth, dense but powerful. Also free.
: free edition