Dr Daniel Berio

Goldsmiths

AutoGraff: A Procedural Model of Graffiti Form. (Industry placement at Media Molecule)

The purpose of this study is to investigate techniques for the procedural and interactive generation of synthetic instances of graffiti art. Considering graffiti as a special case of the calligraphic tradition, I  propose a "movement centric" alternative to traditional curve generation techniques, in which a curve is defined through a physiologically plausible simulation of a (human) movement underlying its production rather than by an explicit definition of its geometry.  In my thesis, I consider both single traces left by a brush (in a series of strokes) and the extension to 2D shapes (representing deformed letters in a large variety of artistic styles). I demonstrate how this approach is useful in a number of settings including computer aided design (CAD), procedural content generation for virtual environments in games and movies, computer animation as well as for the smooth control of robotic drawing devices.

Daniel Berio is a researcher and artist from Florence, Italy. Since a young age Daniel was actively involved in the international graffiti art scene. In parallel he developed a professional career initially as a graphic designer and later as a graphics programmer in video games, multimedia and audio-visual software. In 2013 he obtained a Master degree from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (Netherlands), where he developed drawing machines and installations materializing graffiti-inspired procedural forms. Today Daniel is continuing his research in the procedural generation of graffiti within the IGGI (Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence) PhD program at Goldsmiths, University of London.