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Generative Art in Go

A creative guide

This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-06-18
Preslav Rachev

This short book will introduce novice and experienced Go programmers to the beautiful world of algorithmic art and computer graphics. If you are looking for new areas to apply your favorite language, go check it out!

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80
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16,439Words
About

About

About the Book

Generative art is a unique form of artistic expression, building bridges between computer programming, randomness, and visual aesthetics. It has kept my imagination for over a decade. While I have never been particularly skilled at drawing, I have always been amazed by what one could achieve with a couple of lines of code.

This book will introduce readers to graphics programming in the Go programming language context through a series of concise examples. It will also guide them in implementing their version of one of my favorite generative art sketches. As a bonus, readers will learn how to turn their command-line sketches into interactive Web applications, using WebAssembly and Web technology's latest standards.

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Categories

Computers and ProgrammingGraphicsGoFine Arts

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Author

About the Author

Preslav Rachev

A seasoned software developer with about a decade of professional experience behind my back. My first real touch with programming dates about a decade further back. Throughout my career, I have had the chance to learn a lot, and I believe that the time has come for me to contribute my knowledge back to the developer community.

Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1Introduction

  1. 1.1My Story
  2. 1.2What did you just pay for?
  3. 1.3Who is this for?
  4. 1.4Chapter Overview

2Generative Art: Definition and Origin

  1. 2.1History
  2. 2.2Processing and the new generation of artists
  3. 2.3Other tools worth mentioning

3Go and Graphics Programming

  1. 3.1Let’s Go!
  2. 3.2Limitations
  3. 3.3Graphics in Go
  4. 3.4Color
  5. 3.5Examples
  6. 3.6Additional Libraries

4Sketch Implementation

  1. 4.1The Algorithm
  2. 4.2Creating the Project
  3. 4.3The Sketch
  4. 4.4Load a source image from a file
  5. 4.5Save the output of an image to a file
  6. 4.6Setting up the Sketch instance
  7. 4.7Implementing the Update method
  8. 4.8Taking our sketch for a spin
  9. 4.9The final sketch code

5Bonus Chapter: Turning our sketch into an interactive Web application using WebAssembly

  1. 5.1Running Go code in the browser
  2. 5.2Creating a scaffold for our new sketch
  3. 5.3Loading a WASM binary in a Web application
  4. 5.4Re-implementing the sketch

Special Thanks and Credits

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