Earthquake Preparedness #21

Earthquake Preparedness (
   Lift Yr. Skinny Fists
      Like Antennas to Heaven )

   by Chris Eugene Mills
      2016, remastered 2023

// ===================================

When the weight of an unattainable city skyline is pressed upon a person, it becomes a wall.

This project was the beginning of my experimentation with digital painting and orthographic '2.5D' layout. I had been doing moiré line studies for a year or two by this point, but a meme of Windows XP's famous window painting glitch, some exploration of hand-drawing in this early-gaming isometric layout, and an ongoing penchant to collect floorplans from architecture blogs on Tumblr led to this tonal study. Likely made after a revelatory WALLPAPERS exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, giving lift to my mind toward the feasibility of a digital art practice.

Earthquake Preparedness was previously exhibited at 'untitled' art space and the City Hall Skytrain Station in Vancouver in 2016.

// Guide // ==========================

It's wallpaper, or a screensaver, no qualms about it. Some iterations of this work are quite slow, but please allow the cityscape to evolve. Meant to be displayed in landscape 16:9, and fullscreen. Scales to high DPI displays.

There's a very rare "Zoning: Undeveloped" feature which looks like a bug, but it's not :D

Tested on Chrome 116, Firefox 117.

// Keyboard Interaction // ===========

press [s]   = save a PNG screenshot
press [g]   = save a 5sec GIF
hold  [t]   = TURBO BUTTON
press [r]   = restart with same seed
press [n]   = restart anew
press [1-6] = adjust DPI and restart
              (1920x1080 - 11520x6480)

// URL Parameters // =================

[scale]     = float, DPI (adaptive)
[preload]   = 0/1, loading screen (true)
[build]     = integer, buildings in preload (100)