I thought that watching this presentation was extremely interesting. Especially because I previously had a hard time wrapping my head around the novelty of using computers to generate art. I always thought: “if I can paint what I can do in Processing, why do I need to produce this art using computers?” But this cemented in my mind how useful creating patterns and art in both predictable and unpredictable ways is, and how computers are the perfect tool to do this. The examples Reas presented allowed me to understand just how flexible computer art is.
How can nature be effectively simulated using computer art? This is something that I wondered throughout the video, and Reas provided effective insight into how this can be done. Not only that, but his discussion of simulating nature and patterns extended to not just art but to the broader use of computing power to create patterns with various applications.