I wanted to create a task that allowed students to create a computer program in Python that would automatically create its own artwork but be customisable so that each student could experiment and personalise their own program to their tastes.
It’s a rough Python 3 program using the Turtle library and an array of Turtles but so far it has produced some really nice work. In the images shown below the program uses a user-defined function that draws a randomly sized square. I thought this would be easy for the students to understand and hack into something new!
Of course art can be created as a response to an external stimulus so a possible extension of this program would be to get input from the user (colours, mood, age) or calculate a range of colours from an input sensor or device (temperature, time, image).
The code is below! Any suggestions or improvements would be appreciated!
import turtle
import random
wn = turtle.Screen()
w = wn.window_width()
h = wn.window_height()
t1 = turtle.Turtle()
t2 = turtle.Turtle()
t3 = turtle.Turtle()
t4 = turtle.Turtle()
t5 = turtle.Turtle()
t6 = turtle.Turtle()
turtles = [t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, t6]
def square(item, size):
for x in range(4):
item.forward(size)
item.right(90)
item.forward(size)
item.left(random.randrange(-180, 180))
wn.tracer(False)
for iteration in range(3):
for item in turtles:
item.penup()
item.goto(random.randrange(-w,w),random.randrange(-h,h))
item.color(random.randrange(0,255)/255.,random.randrange(0,255)/255.,random.randrange(0,255)/255.)
item.pendown()
wn.tracer(False)
for move in range(2500):
for item in turtles:
item.speed(0)
square(item,random.randrange(5,25))
wn.tracer(True)
wn.exitonclick()
