“Orbits” as generative art
Particles are released into a three dimensional space with random velocities. As they approach various “attractors” their orbital pathways are altered. The art is generated by tracing and shading the orbital trajectories. Light has been added to the algorithm’s output in “Lightroom” to accentuate depth. Click photo for full screen imagery.
My work on orbital algorithms was inspired by various exercises and coding challenges in Daniel Shiffman’s “The Nature of Code”. His chapter on coding forces and Newton’s laws of motion gave me the tools to explore the design potential of gravitational orbits. The sketches below show some of my early experimentation. These orbits occur in 2-dimensional space. The particles are pixel sized and quite translucent. The pathways which emerge are the result of the particle’s superimposition on the same canvas space many times. Many of the images below needed to process all night in order to emerge.
Rendering similar particle trajectories in 3-D space was my next step. Instead of programming a “trace” of the orbits, I wanted to store the position of each particle at every iteration and display all of the iterations at once so that the viewer would be able to navigate around and travel through the resulting 3-D paths. (Images to come.)