Never the Same

Every spring, the flowers bloom, and they sway in the breeze.
Every spring, we go and see those flowers swaying in the breeze.
And when spring is gone, we think about those flowers swaying in the breeze.
And when spring returns, the flowers will bloom and sway again, in the breeze.
Always the same, and never the same.

Nat Sarkissian



This work simulates a grassy meadow with wildflowers. Each flower has various properties, like species, age, etc. and some of these are functions of time.
Every time you run this code, the output will be slightly different.

There are three types of outputs you can generate from this code:

1. Still frames: The default behavior when you run this code in your browser, is to render a single still frame of the scene. This is analogous to taking a photo of the meadow. Any two photos will be different as the flowers move and grow. You can print or view these still frames like any other still image.

2. Wind animation: With the code running in your browser, you can tap the 'w' key. This will start a loop that renders and downloads 30 frames. When it's done, you'll have 30 png files on your hard drive that you can assemble into whatever format you like. I recommend looping GIFs at 16 frames per second, but video files work fine too and are nice for adding sound.

3. Timelapse: Very similar to the wind animation, when you tap the 't' key, 30 frames will be rendered and downloaded. These will animate to show the growth of the meadow over the last 2 weeks. Again, assemble these into the video format of your choice. Of course, this won't be a loop, because it's a timelapse.

Finally, the outputs of this algorithm have been curated by the artist.

This project is part of the digital section of Cure³ at Bonhams, curated by Alex Estorick and Foteini Valeonti of reGEN.

Never the Same #164

Never the Same #164