The Lemonary » Generative

Hue/Saturation/Fog

larry — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:08:08 +0000

I came across these photos from Olafur Eliasson‘s latest installation in Beijing, Feelings are facts, over at designboom. I saw a book of his work this winter and liked the more geometric pieces, but love, love, love this one: spaces filled with shifting, saturated colorfog.

(images from designboom)

When I started Rivers, this was a guiding principle. The first sketches were actually volumetric color fields oozing around with objects and networks floating around in them.

As it developed, I kept these color gradients as they materialized onto surfaces. I’m just a sucker for these palettes (and funny how much the ground here looks like Eliasson’s ceiling above :)

Heartbeat

larry — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:25:40 +0000

I was invited to play a Valentine’s Day party and thought I’d conjure up some hearts for it. These functions at Mathworld looked suitable for some parametric sweetness so I grabbed one.

And shortly had them floating around…

…at the Red Party.

Location, location, location

larry — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:09:24 +0000

Last week I was working on Loveland inch viz at the Marsh Cafe in the Mission, where they happen to be producing a show called Loveland. Last time I mentioned a 2D-yet-linear progress bar, showing each inchvestor’s share with colors! and squares! Thought I’d share some steps along the way towards real placement on the 9′ Plymouth grid, experiments with placing rectangular plots. A random scattering…

And more clustering tendencies…

The empty swath in the middle is a walkway to provide pedestrian access to all parts of Plymouth, as originally taped down on the studio floor in Detroit. (We don’t want visitors trampling the miniature city…)

Some big news this week: early investors’ square inches will become square feet once we reach 10,000 and colonize the next patch of land. For now play with it on the web over at makeloveland. Keen observers will notice that the whole arrangement reshuffles every few minutes – just to keep things interesting…

Letterfun

larry — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:50:08 +0000

Check out these sweet generative typography experiments using Processing / Geomerative over at Caligraft. I always loved doodling serif letterforms myself…

They remind me of John Langdon’s ambigrams, calligraphic creations that have extremely clever rotational or mirror symmetry.

Here’s an interview with him, and a whole magazine (Ambigram) with articles, galleries, and automatic generators.

In Space

larry — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:26:47 +0000

My lone post at Spacecollective gives an overview of the Rivers project, historically & conceptually, and my take on generative work. I’ve written on the same topics here but still think it’s a good introduction for any newcomers. Enjoy!

I’m giving a talk 10/27

larry — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:12:07 +0000

Next Tuesday October 27, LoveTech presents LearnTech, a live electronic music technology & interactive art salon. I’m scheduled for 10:50pm and will be discussing my 3D generative art, from inspiration to thought process, code and specific techniques. There will be other really cool projects presented as well, so please join us!

Tuesday Oct 27th
7-12am (likely later) at Il Pirata
2007 16th St (@ Utah St), San Francisco
Free, Donations Appreciated

Randomness

larry — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:11:05 +0000

I’ve recently unearthed my TI-85 calculator from school, evoking those hours in study hall writing TI-BASIC programs. Even then my favorite function was the random number generator, and I can recall one program that would create a monochrome, pixelated garden with vines creeping and spiraling, growing leaves and flowers. Unpredictable and different every time, that’s the important bit.

Enjoy this wonderful Long Now conversation with Brian Eno and Will Wright on generative music, visual design, psychology and games — I’ve mentioned before how seeing Eno’s 77 Million Paintings inspired my Rivers project in 2007. This is the first ten minutes:

Spacecollective

larry — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:26:06 +0000

When I discovered the Spacecollective gallery I felt overwhelmed and dizzy like I had met myself while traveling abroad, because I had been collecting many of these same images as fascinating & inspirational source material, studies in complexity and emergent patterns. Escher, Haeckel, generative architecture, networks, electron microscopy, immiscible fluids, fractal cauliflower.

There’s a lot of great writing and artwork there about the future of humankind and the evolution of consciousness, I encourage you to go browse!

Focus

larry — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:25:21 +0000

I added a depth of field shader to Rivers, an effect I’ve wanted for a long time, since I really love how it looks in miniature / close-up photography. Here’s a test run with some blocks:

and applied to the usual scenery it lends a hazy atmosphere:

The technique records distance-to-camera values for each pixel (smuggle them in the alpha channel) and then interpolates between a sharp version of the scene and a blurred one as outlined in this nVidia paper and this post.

Postcards

larry — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:29:21 +0000

I have some prints in the upcoming show at APW Gallery in NYC. It runs June 5 – 29, with an opening reception June 5 from 6 – 8pm. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. (I won’t be ;)