Volatile Moods

Through a single gestural brushstroke, Undercurrent explores the dynamic movements and complex subtleties concealed below the surface — elements we only glimpse when we muster the courage to scratch beneath what is readily visible. 

Accompanied by a variety of palettes and patterns, explore the depths, where truth and self-discovery unfold with grace.

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Press 's' to save the PNG image of the current view. Press '1' to '5' to save PNG image in various resolutions from lower to higher. Additionally, URL option &pd can be used to set desired pixel density from 1 to 4.

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Code is written in p5js and uses 2d canvas for rendering.


By @VolatileMoods, December, 2023.

Explore the depths beneath the surface, where truth and self-discovery unfold with grace.

Undercurrent

Daniel Aguilar

**Tetra**

A pixel, the most basic element of a digital image, presents just a few properties: position, color, and opacity. By allowing it to mutate just slightly, how far can it lead us? In its simplicity, can it capture our complex perceptions, our dreams and fears, our quest for awe?

Tetra takes the square and plays with its identity by inviting it to transform. As an individual entity, it is unique yet almost invisible; but as part of a larger context, it becomes a jewel worthy of admiration.

Initially starting as a purely geometric, structural study, Tetra evolved, becoming increasingly intimate to me. It resonated with the emotions I was experiencing in my personal life, spontaneously reconciling logic and intuition, individuality, and belonging.

The mix of vivid, saturated colors with dry, muddy washes splattered throughout. The sharp, perfectly aligned shapes become loose and disordered, as if being pushed by some invisible, mighty force. It's like fallen leaves, once full of life and color, now dragged by a cold, merciless winter wind. The magnificent presence of light, glitter, and shine, juxtaposed with muted deserts. And the ubiquity of darkness, albeit almost imperceptible, present even in the brightest places and moments.

I present Tetra as a snapshot and a metaphor of my inner self. It accurately captures the mix of feelings I've been grappling with recently. The duality of being fully connected with the Whole while simultaneously feeling essentially alone, split apart. It's a meditation on the unavoidable impermanence, for better or worse. It realizes that we are beautiful, delicate mosaics made of pieces from multiple pasts, constantly dissolving into something else, to someday become mosaics of multiple futures.


**Tech Notes**

Some outputs can be quite intensive in terms of computation, especially at higher resolutions, and therefore require a capable, relatively modern computer and browser. Best viewed in Chrome. Firefox and Edge should also work, albeit more slowly. Safari is not supported. Please ensure that the artwork is rendered properly on your device and browser before minting.


**High-Resolution Downloads**

Open the artwork in full-screen mode and append the "density" URL param with a number indicating the pixel ratio (i.e. "...&density=4"). Max supported value is determined by the computer capabilities and the edition complexity. I've successfully generated up to "density=15" (on a Macbook Pro M2 Max, 32GB RAM), resulting in a 11205 x 19920px PNG file. However, values between 2-5 are usually enough for regular-size prints at 300dpi

**Credits:**

p5.js (GNU LGPL)


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**Contact**

- Daniel Aguilar, December 2023
- Twitter: @protozoo
- Instagram: @prtzart
- Website: https://protozoo.xyz

NFT License 2.0

Tetra explores the transformative power of small, elemental details, from simple geometry to a rich tapestry of emotions. It's a visual study of individuality, connection, and the ever-changing mosaic of life.

Tetra

Stranger in the Q

_Xeno_ is a journey into the unseen worlds of distant star systems. Breathtaking and colorful, dark and frightening. Extraterrestrial landscapes and natural phenomena, traces of extraterrestrial life and minerals, mountains and coastlines, sunsets and sunrises. And all of the palettes have been titled according to the names of the nearest star systems.

This piece began eleven months ago, in early 2023. I created a custom library for one of the _Genuary_ challenges, which led to the first _Xeno_ prototype. Over the next few months, while coding from my phone, I made about ten different versions of this algorithm, leading to some pretty interesting results. As I prepared for this show, I switched to working on my laptop; and the final piece is combination of the best parts from each of my experiments from over the last year.

Most of the work is done on the fragment shader with the occasional use of simplex noise. This is one of the most complex shaders I've done so far — tackling some things that are quite hard to control — so I'm very happy with the result.

CLICK on image to turn on an animation mode (requires modern GPU to run).

Please enjoy!

https://strangerintheq.art/xeno


A generative exploration of unseen extraterrestrial things — landscapes, life forms, natural phenomena, etc. Xeno is made using a single pass of a fragment shader with a lot of noise. Please enjoy!

Xeno

Leonardo Solaas

Time is like a furtive acid. It quietly dissolves objects, lives, and memories. Every novelty is already old, every meeting already a goodbye. Everything around us is flowing away — even if, fixated on permanence, anxious to hold on, we choose not to notice.

_Evanescencia_ tries to capture through a digital procedure the feeling of things passing and fading by setting in motion a two-step algorithmic process. First, a structured particle system is used to draw a representational image of a flower, but it remains hidden from view. Instead, the color values from this source image are translated into forces that guide the movements for a swarm of drawing agents. As they drift around this flow field, a nebulous picture is gradually built up on the screen by the traces of color they leave in their wake, each of them a fuzzy aggregate of thousands of tiny lines.

The flower, thus, remains an elusive presence: it is generated behind the scenes, and immediately deconstructed in a way that brings it to the border of abstraction. It becomes, not a representation of something beautiful, but an immaterial force. It is the invisible source of a painting, as if sketched from a distant memory or from vague imagination.

Press  
[s] to download image capture.  
[2-9] to redraw and save an upscaled image (the numbers correspond to a multiple of the base 800 x 1000 pixel resolution).  
[SPACE] to pause/unpause animation.  

Made with p5.js



What stays with us from the things that are gone? What is kept, lost or changed by memory? What remains of the flowers of yesterday? Evanescencia is not about representing the concrete, but fading memories, vague imaginations, and the quiet dissolution of everything around us.

Evanescencia

ella

At it’s core, Cinders relies on what I affectionately call “smoke” algorithm, which distributes a set of parameters over each pixel in a grid such that each parameter is only used once — no two pixels are the same. These parameters determine the way that the pixels revolve and undulate, as well as the vibrant colors of the pixels, and the ways those colors shift over time.

The colors in each iteration of Cinders are chosen with a novel fully-generative color-picking algorithm. The piece sidesteps fixed palettes entirely, and instead each iteration generates a unique color scheme, derived by placing a distorted rectangle in the 3D cylinder of the OkHSL color space. The result is a kaleidoscope of harmonious and unique palettes.

Made with JavaScript and GLSL.

Press "f" to enter full-screen mode, or "s" to save a screenshot.

A generative endless animation crafted with domain warping and a novel pixel-filling algorithm, exploring motion, generative composition, and algorithmic color generation.

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