Monday, June 20, 2011

Project 4 Final



Although the possible outcomes from running this code are infinite, I chose these two images to represent my project, as they are relatively 'normal' outcomes, shown in both background configurations.

The concept for this project is based on the theory of alternate, parallel universes. Imagine there are two versions of our universe, and both (for the sake of simplicity) 'began' at the same point in time. However, the two universes were very slightly affected by different, small, chaotic occurrences along the way, and thus are not entirely congruent, but because they started at the same point and share similar characteristics, they are, for the most part, reflective of the other.

This project takes those ideas and converts them into something simple that can be seen. The figure that is drawn on the right side of the screen is our universe, and, on the left, a parallel universe. Because of the math used to generate the drawing, they are, technically, a 'reflection' of one another, due to the fact that part of the equation is raising a value to the power of -1, causing it to alternate while it draws.

However, they are not entirely true reflections of each other, because an element of chaos (or, for the sake of this project and limits of math randomness) affecting the draw frequency of the lines (on which the math is partly based), there exist slight discrepancies. Also, you may note that the two sides do not 'look' congruent, but again, the congruency is purely mathematical, so they will not appear as true reflections, even though visual similarities exist.

Pretty Pictures




Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Final - Project 3


Hierarchy, symmetry and scale. Creating an image/animation to represent this, my initial thought was to create a pattern; tiling and the like. This project has several layers to it: the initial shape is a rhombus, or, more appropriately, a parallelogram. This has been repeated and rotated around a central axis to create a circular shape comprised of parallelograms. Hierarchy is introduced by incrementally increasing the stroke width of each parallelogram to be marginally wider than the previous one. I introduced a random burst of colour into the pattern, calculated by a narrow selection of random numbers, to alter the viewer's perception of the pattern and the ideas it connotes. Think of lightning, or maybe a music visualiser, or phosphenes. It is an attempt to recreate the imagery you can sometimes see when you close and squeeze your eyelids tightly.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

randomTorus


I used a random distribution algorithm as my starting base for this project. Essentially, the script draws lines along a sine wave and/or a cosine wave in a randomly distributed manner creating a small shape, plots it in three dimensional space, and rotates it based on the frame count along different axes for the different objects.

I was inspired by screen-savers you used to see on old computers, for example, the geometric/line visualisations on computers running Mac OS 7/8 in the mid 90s. I have managed to create a "shape" using structured randomness, yet the formation of the shape is always different, since the lines are constantly changing. I think it works well visually, and I enjoy the abstract vibe this project gives off.

As for the colours, my selection was based on the fact that the background works better dark when running it in 3D. Because of the dark background, the colours needed to contrast, but just enough so that it is never too bright. I chose to gradate my colours between blue/indigo and red, with pink in between. These are a couple screens of this script at opposite stages of motion.