Expanse #14

land • generative audio • sky

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A meditation on the meeting point of sky and land, inspired by the salt marshes near my home, but with an other-worldly influence. I'm always keenly aware, perhaps as we all are, that humanity's hold on the planet is slipping. In time we may be forced to explore new avenues for survival, but then the dream of seeking a new world is nothing new. And then, pessimistic as it may be, perhaps one day we shall be forced to simply survey a desolate and scarred Earth, and admit that despite all they did, humanity got it wrong.

The piece takes place in a widescreen canvas, resolutely sticking to a monochrome rendition except in a vanishingly-rare coloured version, expected to appear in around 2.5% of pieces. Colour is interesting, of course, so there are extensive options for playing with various colour modes—details available on pressing 'I' in full-screen mode.
However… white on black, or black on white; the main piece relies on density, dot-size and texture for effect, whilst the aspect ratio not only suits modern computer screens, but allows for the expansive nature of the horizon to stretch forth.

The heart of the piece is the landscape itself, a small section of a very large circle. The OpenProcessing sketch ‘Landscape Curvature’ documents my initial steps on the piece, a fumbling return to trigonometry.

Curvature is thoroughly explored: a larger circle produces a nearly-horizontal line, with perpendicular features, whilst a smaller circle produces extremes of curvature, and divergingly-angled additions. Additionally, a negatively-large circle can be generated, inverting the horizon as though viewed through a fish-eye lens. Features sway towards each other, and cluster dangerously close in the centre of the piece.

Although the piece is considered finished after three-hundred and sixty frames, I like the render process to be as much a point of interest as the finished piece, and so the landscape is formed progressively: thousand upon thousands of tiny points maniuplated and added to the piece over time.

This artwork renders fastest and most accurately in Google Chrome.