Saving incremental versions frees generative artists to experiment boldly without fear

Pearson advocates using ‘Save As’ with incrementing filenames (Sketch_1, Sketch_2, etc.) rather than plain Save. This creates a version trail — a history of the work’s evolution. The psychological benefit is significant: knowing you can roll back to any prior state makes it safe to make sweeping, experimental changes. This ‘bumper car’ effect (you drive more recklessly knowing no one gets hurt) encourages more daring creative exploration. For Processing, scripts are small text files (rarely more than a few KB), so keeping many versions costs nothing in disk space. Modern alternative: use git for the same safety with full diff history.

Examples

Filename sequence: WaveClock_1.pde, WaveClock_2.pde, WaveClock_3.pde. Each saved at a meaningful milestone. If WaveClock_15 goes wrong, revert to WaveClock_14 instantly.

Assessment

Describe your version control practice for a generative art sketch and explain how it would let you safely try replacing all Perlin noise calls with sin() calls without risking your best result.