about the art
In 2011, I discovered the processing.org website and began teaching myself “processing”. Processing was developed by a team at MIT. Their aim was to create a computer language that would expand the pallet of visual artists by offering a relatively easy way to code algorithms which draw objects to the screen. Processing “sketches” are displayed as “frames” like frames in a motion picture. Each frame is an iteration of the code contained in a draw() function.
This code creates linked pendulums of random length to simulate the look of kinky hair. Click on the code then click the “run circle” on the “openprocessing” page to see the results.
Daniel Shiffman teaches creative coding at NYU and offers hundreds of on-line Processing tutorials. His book THE NATURE OF CODE was an inspiration to me. As the title suggests, it’s a book about coding nature, its forces, its laws, its wonder. When objects on a screen are let loose in a “natural world” of code, their behavior resonates in ways that are simultaneously familiar and foreign. Even though the “laws of nature” are created by the coder, we have the distinct feeling that what we are seeing is somehow real.
“Shatter” is an exercise in NATURE OF CODE. The pixels that make up a black cube are actually coded as “particles” in a “particle system”. When you mouse-click, the program applies gravitational forces to the particles, as well as random initial velocities.
Click the code to go to the “openprocessing” sketch.
Video output from the algorithm. The darker the particle, the faster it’s displacement by applied forces.
My still photo based generative art maps the color values of individual pixels onto a particle system. In the code above, the mass of each particle is set as a function of the “brightness” value for each pixel. The darker the pixel, the lower the mass of the mapped particle, and the faster the particle is displaced by any applied forces.
Click the photo to see the “flow video”.
I wanted to create “particle photos” that could be appreciated either as movies, or as individual stills. I am currently working on a collection of nature photos I shot in Prince Edward County, developing new algorithms which allow each photo to abstract in different ways. The idea is to compliment and reflect upon the texture and composition of the original. Stills from each work are meant to be displayed as inkjet prints, with accompanying QR codes. The viewer may choose to scan the QR code to see the animated version, in this way coming to a different understanding of the image’s internal flow.