Having been thinking about the lecture last week, I remembered a whole load of images I’ve seen over the years that are made out of text. I find the images fascinating and have always wanted a reason to make one, maybe this module is it?
I remember being told about Ovid at school, possibly when I was doing my GCSEs years ago and the name Ovid rang a bell when I read it on this site. This is taken from the book 1 of ‘Metamorphoses’ by Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
Of bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
‘Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc’d from Nature’s birth, to Caesar’s times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav’n’s high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d, and unfram’d,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam’d.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois’d, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.
Now I wish my school had offered classical studies because this excerpt and the rest really fascinates me.
So far I’ve looked at chaos from the mathematical scientific perspective;
“Mathematically, chaos means deterministic behaviour which is very sensitive to its initial conditions. In other words, infinitesimal perturbations of initial conditions for a chaotic dynamic system lead to large variations in behaviour.”
So it seemed appropriate to expand on this and look at how others view chaos and I vaguely remembered reading at school (a fair few years ago!) about the ancient Greeks relating creation to chaos;
“Chaos (derived from the Ancient Greek, Chaos) typically refers to a state lacking order or predictability. In ancient Greece, it referred to the initial state of the universe, and, by extension, space, darkness, or an abyss (the antithetical concept was cosmos). In modern English, it is used in classical studies with its original meaning; in mathematics and science to refer to a very specific kind of unpredictability; and informally to mean a state of confusion. In popular culture, the word can occur with all three meanings.”
“In Greek myth, Chaos is the original dark void from which everything else appeared. According to Hesiod’s Theogony (the origin of the gods), Chaos was the nothingness out of which the first objects of existence appeared. In a similar way, the book of Genesis in the Bible refers to the earliest conditions of the Earth as “without form, and void”, while Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes the initial state of the Universe as a disorganised mixture of the four elements”
All taken from: absoluteastronomy.com
This has quite a connection with my possible use of the lorenz attractor as my 3d navigable model in my project. The object could be seen metaphorically as the creation after the chaos. It’s just an initial reaction, but might be worth perusing?
Still along the lorenz attractor theme…
I found this 3ds max script file which produces a lorenz curve, great! I found the file here Just to make it clear as someone on the forum kindly points out, many people have produced the lorenz attractor, and I’m just using the script, not taking credit for it! 
The script in action:
This is what the script produces when rendered:
While I was explaining my ideas and the things I’m interested at looking at for 4d today to the others in the group, it was suggested I look into giving my project (see space navigation post ) a story or context, and this might also help me determine what the 3d object might be that I’d like to have the users navigate and explore.
While I was thinking about that, the butterfly came back into mind. I was looking into ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ and came across this website that said ‘How to Find Inner Peace Amid Outer Chaos’. The butterfly or lorenz attractor could be the 3d object as it brings the project full circle.
I found this and thought it was quite cool, and worth linking to with reference to my project.
First lecture for the narrative module was today, I’m hoping this module will be interesting, not sure just yet. Bit early to say after just one lecture! Here’s the brief…
“Produce and present an original digital work that experiments with narrative and form in terms of conventions, languages, techniques or practices.”
Not quite sure what to make of it at the moment, need a little while to mull it over.
I borrowed a 3d mouse (see below) over the Christmas holidays to use with 3ds max. The mouse allows you to Pan, zoom and rotate as if you’re holding the model in your hand or fly like a helicopter through three-dimensional worlds.
While playing with the mouse, which is actually quite hard to get the hang of, I found some quartz composer uses for the mouse this is one of them, which might prove useful for my 4d project as I’m interested in navigating through 3d space and the idea of a user experience rather than a film for instance.
There is something quite beautiful about this quartz piece, the user can rotate and explore the 3d object, in real time and in a 3d space. I think it’s really interesting. I particularly like the interactive element to this, which I’d really like to incorporate into my project. If only I’d thought of this first!
The more I think about my project and the more I realise how much I like the quartz example above, I’ve decided the following are important:
- the user has the control over the experience
- the user is able to pan, rotate, and explore the object
- maybe display the animation in the dome – it would make the navigation of the object more of an experience
- the experience the user gets should be the most important part of my project
I took with me what i’ve written in the post ‘technology remotely controlling biology…’ along to my meeting with my project tutor and as we were talking I jotted down a list of things that were of interest or sparked ideas in my mind. Here’s a brief list of the areas I’m thinking about/following up to do with my project:
- School based project
I’d already determined this really, it was just nice to know that this could be a good grounding for the context of my project. - Children learning about respect and responsibilities, integrity.
This again is important with regards to context, it would prove the project actually had a real purpose and could be used in the real world. - Light and plant in interaction
- This is something I’d like to incorporate into my project, as I’ve mentioned already.
These are the areas I’m thinking about, and determining whether I think they would be suitable/practical to incorporate into my idea:
- Glass vessel for growing plant to feed animal in water
The vessel that is used in the image below, makes the piece look very distinguished, sleek and aesthetically pleasing, this is something I’d really like to aim for in my project. - Hydroponics
I like the idea of growing a plant in water, simply for aesthetic reasons, and also from a children’s point of view when learning, they would actually be able to see the roots. - Tamagochi
This is a word that other people have mentioned when i explained my idea to them, it again reflects this idea of dependency.
While I was talking to my project tutor the other day I mentioned I wanted to incorporate plants into my project, because they encourage relationships between humans and plants and that relationship is an inherently dependant one he showed me this image he’d scanned, ‘Local River’ by Mathieu Lehanneur with Anthony van den Bossche, because it covers the idea of dependency.
This video shows the setting up of such a system.
The project is described as on the youtube page as: ‘This DIY fish-farm-cum-kitchen-garden is based on the principle of aquaponics coupled with the exchange and interdependence of two living organisms – plants and fish.’
Other interesting and projects by Mathieu Lehanneur can be found here
I went off the idea of using quartz composer because:
1) I found the interface a big mind boggling
2) I thought it was good many for inputting data feeds and outputting visuals and as I didn’t have any data I discounted it – too easily it might seem.
I was sent a link to a cool little quartz file, it’s a tunnel which the viewer ‘travels’ through if you like, and the direction of travel can be controlled using the arrow keys on a keyboard. It’s quite fun for a little while, but it’s a little bit low and the tunnel shape isn’t all that realistic.
Having said that I’ve downloaded the file and have been playing around with it, trying to work out how everything works etc.
Here’s a grab of the tunnel clip.
I’ve been playing around with trying to speed the ‘fly through’ feeling up, changing the textures/colours. As I’ve mentioned in other posts the idea of vection intrigues me, which is why I was trying to speed it up I thought it might have a slightly nauseating feeling if you watch it for long enough. Which I’ve found it does but I think that’s only because I’ve been starring at it a lot!
As i’ve mentioned maybe putting a plant, or seed, in some form of box and seeing it grow and having external factors that affect the growth of the plant. An artist called Eduardo Kac has a project called Genesis which is along similar lines.
According to Kac’s website ‘Genesis is a transgenic artwork that explores the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction, ethics, and the Internet.’ See the rest of the project description here.
As a more simplified project, I’d like to look into biology and technology.
