Rules are in Dutch, so I did a quick translation of the most important parts
Generate Mondriaan's Victory Boogie Woogie in code
Everyone who can make squares appear on a screen can join until March 7th 2013
Submit your code to elegant@setup.nl
Rules
* Any programming language can be used
* Please do try to document your code as good as possible and add a little description how it works, as the judges will not speak all programming languages
* Please add a little manual on how to run your program on the judges' machine
* Code will remain secret until the deadline of March 7th 2013
* After the deadline all code will be published on Github, licensed under MIT license and with proper attribution to the author
* Your submission must consist of the following:
* Sourcecode
* Output of your program (image)
* Short description of the algorithm used
* Contact details
"It is a kind of demoscene contest, where beauty come first. You do not have to produce a one-on-one copy of the painting. The jury rates on quality and creativity of the used algorithms."
As a side note, the Google translation from Dutch to English seems pretty bad. I submitted a few improved translations; I did not know this feature existed before, and I'm curious how it works behind the scenes. Presumably a human has to read them to verify they are correct; I don't know Dutch, so I am making educated guesses based on the existing translation and online Dutch to English dictionaries.
If you'd like to participate you might want to send and email to find out if you're eligible to enter. Or consider it just an intellectual challenge ;-)
There's a famous 1965 experiment to generate synthetic Mondrians by computer. Most people couldn't tell which was real, and people actually liked the fake better. This was some of the earliest computer art, done on an IBM 7090. (Just a historical note, not a comment on the current contest.)
There's another one in Warsaw, Poland, in the city's arguably most slumsiest estate comprised of three low-standard blocks of flats with no infrastructure:
I wrote some code a little while ago to do something like this (although I wasn't trying to produce Victory Boogie Woogie in particular)[1]. It generates samples from a probability distribution over kd-trees called the Mondrian Process [2]
I'm a little bit sad that such awesomeness can be reduced to an algorithm. As my graphic designer friends used to joke, "There's a Photoshop filter for that!"
I'd be really impressed if a computer program simulated the -tactile- texture and gamut as well.
Mondrian's New York period paintings are deceptively simple. I've read a teacher's writeup of his student's efforts to recreate Mondrian's Composition (I think). Not easy.
Matching the palette, precise layering, bevels and edges. Mondrian's New York paintings were precise and subtle.
Here's a similar description (can't find the article I vaguely remember):
Two-year study of Mondrian's Victory Boogie Woogie in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag to be rounded off by symposium
Thursday, 28 August 2008
http://www.codart.nl/news/338/
Generate Mondriaan's Victory Boogie Woogie in code
Everyone who can make squares appear on a screen can join until March 7th 2013
Submit your code to elegant@setup.nl