Naiadic Variations #13

Naiads are water nymphs, creatures from Greek mythology that hang out around small bodies of fresh water. They are typically depicted in human form but I like to think they're more watery; more fluid and flowing and formless. I came across some recently while making some work with fountains...

The Context

In late 2023 I realised a project I’d been carrying around in my head for many years… I love the stubby, frothy fountains that bubble along the edge of the Barbican lake in the city of London. I love to watch the water rise and fall in infinite ever-morphing variations.

I created two pieces of work capturing these fountains. One is pure video, the other is a digital collage of photos animated with a shader. You can view excerpts of them both here (https://vimeo.com/elwynco/slow-water) and here (https://vimeo.com/elwynco/still-water) respectively.

After making these pieces, I was inspired to go a step further and try and recreate the entire phenomena out of code. What came out was more creaturely than I expected. The naiads in the fountains had clearly found a way to manifest themselves through my vulnerable human mind. (I assume the technology of lens and sensor were too harsh to tease out their shy souls.)

The Piece

To create this algorithmic work, I began with a simple geometric composition which abstracted the form of those Barbican fountains.

This image was then passed to a single GLSL shader that would manipulate the pixels with a variety of noises and distortions. The primary effect is achieved by interpreting the base image into black and white versions, which then wind and warp around each other in near-infinite unpredictable ways. These are the naiads.

In some rare variations we see them as reflections of each other on either side the canvas. In even rarer modes, their energy levels are extra high and their watery swirls dance in wide erratic loops.

Whatever form they take, they come in a variety of dampness-inpspired hues (7 to be precise).

Generate a large printable version

The standard animated version can only render up to about 5000px wide because of browser limitations. However, if you want a very hi-res version for print you can use print mode. Print mode disables the animation function animate.

To use print mode add this to the url: ?print=true&width=12000 (where 12000 is the width you desire in pixels). It's recommended to use a Chromium browser (Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc) for this.

Once the image is ready, press [s] on your keyboard to save as a PNG.

When watching the live version you can press [spacebar] at any time to play/pause the animation. When you pause the animation a frame=xxxx parameter will be added to the url. You can use this to print a specific frame.

To do this, just add the frame value to the url like this: ?print=true&width=12000&frame=1234 (where 1234 is the frame number you want to print).

Gallery Mode

When in live mode press [g] on your keyboard to enter gallery mode. This will create some padding around the canvas and the edge of the browser, add a subtle drop shadow and round the edges a little. Use this mode as an improved way of displaying the work on a standalone screen.

Further reading

For a broader description of the project go to: https://generative.elwyn.co/collections/naiadic-variations

Tested in all major browsers on Apple silicon and on windows PC with an Intel chip.