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Make

Scalable Art

Use simple commands to
build organic patterns with
Context Free software.
By John Edgar Park

Context Free (CF) is a free program for creating images of incredible beauty and complexity. Instead of a complicated user interface cluttered with tools, it uses a very simple set of commands called the Context Free Design Grammar. Here’s how you can dive in and use it to create an organic, recursive tree graphic suitable for printing on canvas, silk-screening on a T-shirt, or even laser etching onto your iPhone (that’s what I plan to do). Even if you’ve never programmed a line of code before, don’t panic! Anyone who can type can write instructions to create wonderful art like you see in these images.

First download the appropriate version of CF for your operating system from contextfreeart.org. Install the software and then launch it.

NOTE: Windows and OS X versions have a graphical user interface; the Linux version is command-line only.

a main shape described at the beginning of a file. Click in the text entry window on the left-hand side of the interface, and type the following, pressing Enter at the end of each line.

startshape TENDRILS

1. CREATE A NEW DOCUMENT Select File ⇒ New from the menu. You don’t need to specify an image size, because the designs you create with CF can be rendered at any resolution you need.

NOTE: While this may look like other programming languages, such as C, it’s not quite the same. Type the lines exactly as they’re listed here to see how they work.

2. PLAN YOUR DESIGN There are only 3 possible building blocks of a CF program: square, circle, and rectangle. These are usually stamped down and transformed in a repetition to create an image. For example, stamp down a circle, then scale and rotate a second circle; repeat until the stamps are too small to see and you can create a perfect, smooth spiral. Introduce some randomness to the angles and scales of your recursive circle and you can create fantastic tendrils. We’ll use this principle to make our design.

4. DEFINE THE TENDRILS RULE The next rule is that all shapes must be defined. Let’s define the TENDRILS rule. We’ll start simple, and add to it as we go. New lines of code are highlighted in blue text.

startshape TENDRILS rule TENDRILS { ARM { } }

This tells CF that when it tries to draw a TENDRILS rule it will do so by drawing an ARM shape. What’s an ARM shape? Well, we have to go define that as a new rule.

3. DESCRIBE THE MAIN SHAPE There are a few rules in CF. First, there is always

5. DEFINE THE ARM RULE The ARM rule will be made from a recursion of the circle shape. First type:

Images by John Edgar Park

86 Make: Volume 17