Wherefore art?

I always wished I could draw beautiful artwork with brushes and colors, but I wound up being a software engineer instead. That doesn't stop the urges though... between the lines of code, the artist in me continues to kick paint buckets and spill creative ideas all over my mind.

So occasionally the artist in me succumbs to the muse and I try to draw things. But sometimes the software engineer in me sighs and takes over, and thinks there might be a way to write a computer program to automatically create better artwork instead. As you can imagine, the right-brained artist and the left-brained engineer tend to scoff at each other over folded arms, and I usually wind up getting nothing done.

But the other day, the two of them got together while I wasn't paying attention, and they started working together on a secret project called "esnw". They pooled their ideas from all four corners of the globe. The artist described large groupings of abstract patterns and colors that might be interesting if combined. The software engineer captured and organized the patterns and colors, and devised a way to choose a different set of patterns and colors, based on a "roll of the dice."

The software engineer, when he finished the prototype, announced, "Pick a number, any number, and the software will use that number to generate a (usually) interesting abstract set of patterns!" The artist, still feeling rather skeptical, suggested the number 360. The engineer typed 360, and the computer immediately displayed this:

The artist was tickled by the circular irony, bold colors and juxtaposition of regular and irregular shapes. The smirk of the software engineer goaded the artist on... Artist: "how about 825?"

The artist was intrigued. "OK hot-shot, I like that combination of patterns, but I don't really like chartreuse in the foreground... I really like those geometric shapes better."

The software engineer didn't miss a beat, "Ah, so you want to know what that picture would look like on the other side of the looking glass? I'll just type in 'negative 825' then, shall I, and see what it looks like from the back?"

The artist was thinking big now.
Artist: "That's great... now, can you make that a 4x3 foot giant poster?"
Engineer: "Why sure, these can be created at any size."
Artist: "654321!"
Engineer: "654321, what? No, not that size... Oh, you mean create a new one? OK, here you go."

The artist was smug. "Well, that looks rather boring for such a large number."

The software engineer shrugged. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... I think that looks rather interesting, myself. I think I'll make that my desktop image."

***

After a week of work, the beginnings of a rather fun art-generator has begun. Currently it only goes up to a million (and down to negative-one-million on the back side,) but that is a lot of different images. And that is just one "world". I have at least 12 additional 3-dimensional worlds coming soon, each with a million possibilities... for example:

If you find this interesting and want to e-mail me a number, I will e-mail you back your very own piece of "esnw-abstract art" directly based on it. And stay tuned, other worlds are on their way!

Oh, the software engineer wants a last word: This is all written in the "POV-Ray" raytracing scene language, and one feature I am building in is the ability to not only write the image, but also to write the related POV-Ray scene text file (a language that can write itself) too, so that you could fine-tune colors and textures once you find a scene you like.

On to the next video... Fractal Serenity

My next video project is "Fractal Serenity"... although I started working on it long before the "Dance of the Technoids" video. It is a much more involved and detailed video, with a bit more of a storyline, although the meanings are twisty and mysteriously shrouded in layers of mist. It started as a dream of a vivid but strange set of landscapes, and a feeling of curiosity and fear.

I have finished the story line, and the pencil sketches for each of the scenes. Lately I have been rendering the sketches as 3D landscapes in POV-Ray (3D computer software), to capture the mystery and intrigue I felt when I visited this place before. I have about 1/2 of these video scenes finished. In the mean time, I have selected a few of the scenes from the video (some are close to complete, some are still early shots with stuff missing), and put together a short trailer, so you can get a glimpse of what's coming. Of course the final product will be crystal-clear DVD quality video and music.

The music you hear was originally computer-generated, then I heavily reworked it into what you hear in the trailer.

The final DVD will likely have a behind-the-scenes extra, where I talk about how I made the music and 3D scenes, show some of the early sketches, and play the original computer-generated seed music, to show how much it has evolved.

Here is the trailer, for your viewing pleasure!


-Link Here-

I see the runway...

I can feel it... this Technoid DVD project is almost complete! The video shoot for the 12 minute "Behind the Scenes" feature is complete, editing is done, and a final draft of the video is ready for OK'ing... I am very pleased with the results! I show the music-writing software and the 3D computer ray-tracing software I used for this. There's also a very sweet recording of Ian playing a solo piece on his guitar on the DVD... we drove up to his place and set up mics and the video camera, and he gave a very solid performance in the soft light of the living room there.



As always, there are little smirky in-jokes sprinkled through this video... including the meaning of the Japanese sign on the door to the studio.

It took some research and shareware fees to find a good way to capture the Mac screen to show how I write music and create the 3D computer animations... I can heartily recommend iShowU, a very nice Macintosh shareware utility for video-capturing moving screen things.

Swooshing into blog-space

The time has come, the dragon said, to blog...

So, rummaging around for some mouthwatering eye and ear candy, I have chosen to start my first-ever blog with my first-ever music video. Enjoy! It's description is below.


-Link Here-
Bouncy Electropop music with aliens dancing around large lava lamps (suggesting that music is literally "universal".) Reaching into my 1980's musical subconscious, I wrote a catchy "Depeche Mode"-like techno-flamenco tune, and then created a mosh pit of Technoids dancing to the music in a hyper-realistic dance hall called "The Candy Bar". Music written note by note in Harmony Assistant and finished/EQed in GarageBand. Live acoustic Spanish guitar performed by Ian Beardsley. Video rendered with POV-Ray Mac, and assembled in iMovie. For the technically curious, there are over 1,200 lines of POV-Ray code (all written by hand in the text language, no modelers were harmed...) to create this. The 2.5 minute movie (in final anti-aliased form) took about 14 continuous hours to render all the frames on an old dual 1 Ghz G4 Mac. Free MP3s of this music and others of mine are available at SchwanSongs, or Macjams. This is my first foray into music videos, I'd love to hear your thoughts (pro and con) about the music and video. A high-quality DVD (with a 10+ minute behind-the-scenes "making-of" video, and a trailer for another music video of mine) will be available soon for purchase. I have a much larger, rather different, 3D music video project in progress now.