Barnacles

“Written Images; a project in contemporary generative print design and art. Its final products will be a book that presents programmed images by various artists. Each print in process will be calculated individually – which makes every single book unique.”

Last night we made a Processing sketch for Written Images.  Since we left our submission until the last minute, we decided to adapt an old project….due to my recent trip to the Aquarium, the barnacle sketch came to mind. Our main hurdle was figuring out how to tile our sketch to create the 4080×2720 px required for the book layout and stay under the 15 second time limit.  Since we had a lot of geometry to draw,  using the processing drawing methods turned out to be way too slow and we had to change the sketch to draw all triangles using OPENGL commands.  This meant we also had to use OPENGL lights and control the camera via GL.  I think the sketch came out ok, although I’d definitely like to work on it more when I get a chance.

Each execution of the program, a new random double curved NURBS surface is created for the barnacles to grow on.  Colors range from yellow to pink based on generation of the barnacle, yellow barnacles randomly subdivide into pinker and pinker ones.  The pores will also be open to different degrees between the different executions of the program. We also made a straighter version… incase the smoothed version doesn’t run fast enough on their computer.

sunflow render test

venation type field

venation type field, originally uploaded by nervous system.

purple and yellow

you may notice that we’re in the process of changing our blog! it looks different now…

On the left, Purple Beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma) as seen at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston earlier this fall.  On the right, a processing sketch.

6 tea towels

For Design Nearby‘s Big Print Lil Print show. December 11th at the Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston.

Digital fabric printing allowed us to make all one of a kind pieces. At the show we will have 5 series / styles of designs, each with 5 separate instances. So 25 unique designs in total. This is one of the series.The patterns were generated in Processing. The pieces measure 18.5″ x 27.75″ and can be used as tea towels or wall hangings.