DAI - distributed autonomous interaction

This is a constantly changing artwork. Keep in mind that each time you reload your iteration or resize the canvas, even though your preferred parameters stay the same, the appearance of the artwork changes!

If you know my series ZEITSTRUDEL you might recognise similarities. ZEITSTRUDEL is about capturing movement patterns. Everything is actively or passively moved by dynamics and interaction. Everything follows rules. Crawling insects, a flock of bird or fish, leaves on the surface of water, grass in the wind, etc.
DAI simulates these movement patterns and extends the natural models with abstract digital capabilities.

Two visual elements produce different outcomes:

1. The dots themselves draw traces of their path
2. Lines between the dots: I bet you did some string art back in elementary school :)

How does it work:
A random number of dots with a random amount of movement are placed on the canvas. They sense dots in a given radius. They attract or repel each other and they flock together, or not. They draw their movement path and/or their connection to neighbouring dots. Doing all that they paint a more or less beautiful, chaotic, colourful picture.
You will mint an iteration based on a given set of parameters. Your mint will always have that set of parameters. However the movement and so the drawing is completely random. Every time you load your minted iteration it will look different. The longer you run an iteration the more it gets painted over and over and over (at least in most cases.)

Some iterations build up with high speed. Some require patience because they build up slowly. Some might even get to a halt and don’t develop any further. Some are delicate, some are bold. Some dots escape beyond their set borders, most don’t. Some colors are piercing your eyes, some shine subtly.

Further random features you will only know after minting:

• You start with visible Lines and/or Dots, you can always switch modes with your keyboard
• Dot size: a weighted size representation of the actual mass of the dot
• Rainbow: This is a rare feature of 10% probability. Switch between rainbow and your selected color palette with [c]

You have some keyboard functionality:

Switch modes
[1] reset and show only lines
[2] reset and show only path
[3] show lines and path, don’t reset

[r] reset current drawing without reloading
[p] pause for admiration
[b] let the dots bounce off of the border or let them pass through
[o] switch border around artwork on/off
[f] switch flocking on / off (If a piece got stuck and nothing is moving anymore, try to switch flocking. Often it will kick some Dots out of its’ gravity trap.)
[c] if you are lucky owner of a rainbow you can switch it off to show the color-palette beneath

[s] save the current screen as png ATTENTION! The current image will reset!
(since DAI is dynamic you can only save your current screen resolution. Redrawing in higher resolutions would create different results)
[i] toggle info box
[Right arrow] - cycle through the color palette to set different background colors - the current drawing resets

Have fun exploring DAI

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Made with p5.js
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April 2023
by M.Schulte
Twitter: @cryptEMES