Hello there, I am
David Jilg
a Computer Scientist and Artist from Germany.
During business hours, I work as a researcher and software developer at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. However, in my spare time I like to use my software and robotics skills for more artistic purposes.
On this website, you can read all about my art projects as well as some of my other, mostly software related, projects.
If you would like to know more about myself, you can head over to the CV section.
My mission
For the most part of my life, I have never considered myself to be an artistic person, let alone an actual 'artist'. I have never amounted to much with a brush or pencil, since I seem to lack the ability for precise hand movements. Maybe that is one of the reason for why I have always been a strong advocate of function over aesthetics.
However, all of that changed when I got to dive into the world of CNC-machining when I got my first 3D printer. CNC-Machines such as 3D-printers, laser engravers or plotters allow you to transfer creations from the digital realm into our physical world. Creating art in the digital realm requires less precision and is much more forgiving. The latter one should be quite obvious, since I have yet to find a physical canvas with an inbuilt Ctrl + Z command 😅.
Another advantage of the digital realm is that you can not only create art with a digital brush, but also with specialized software that you can program yourself. Programming and software development has continually been one of my favorite activities ever since I wrote my first Java program. Therefore, many of my artworks have been created programmatically.
So by this point you are probably wondering why this section is called 'My Mission'. What am I actually trying to achieve with this blog?
Creating art has brought me much joy in my life, and it has been a great tool to fend off all the bad thoughts trying to pull me down. The biggest leaps I made during my journey of becoming an artist were mostly prompted by witnessing other artists create remarkable works of art. Art cannot exist without inspiration. For example, I got inspired to experiment with creating art using algorithms and plotters by this blog post from fellow artist Sergej Stoppel.
So my goal with this blog is simple. I want to try to inspire a few more people to contribute art to our world. Simply because:
The earth without art is just 'eh'. Demetri Martin
Featured Projects
Here are some of my favorite projects. To view all projects use the top menu or click here.
World of Warcraft is one of the most iconic video games of all time. To reminisce about some of the great memories I have of its fictional world Azeroth, I decided to create a topographic map of it using my newly acquired Laser Cutter.
| Tags: | Video Games Laser Engraving Maps |
David Jilg
For me, The Last of Us is the best video game ever made. Together with its sequel, it tells the story of Ellie Williams and Joel Miller. Due to the amazingly written characters, it is one of the most immersive stories you can experience and one that you will probably remember for the rest of your life. That's why I decided to reflect on this story with two related artworks.
| Tags: | Video Games Maps Plotting |
David Jilg
A few years ago, I developed the Line Portrait Generator (LPG), a software for generating vector portraits consisting of only lines. The software has quite a few problems and limitations. For example, due to it being implemented in Python, it is rather slow. When I wanted to get more familiar with Go, I was looking for a project to implement with it. Therefore, I decided to reimagine the LPG in Go. Vecart is a tool for creating vector art specifically targeted at plotters or laser engravers. It can convert raster images (e.g., PNG, JPG) into vector graphics (.svg) made up of arbitrary shapes.
| Tags: | Programming Software |
David Jilg