“A particular order can be found in deepest space, in our oceans and forests, and in all living things, including ourselves – a unified code producing endless variation.  Gravity and cosmic winds shape star-forming nebulas into coral-like forms.  Flowers self-organize in radial symmetry with signals hidden from the human eye.  Stars are birthed, explode, collapse, and are reborn.  Invertebrates move on the tides of oceans, signaling with ever-changing bioluminescence.  Light bends time as events unfold in our own lives.” 

Cosmic Reef reflects on the ordered randomness in nature, capable of producing beauty and symmetry.  The individual works begin with a simple geometry that becomes more complex through composed dynamic layers, each born of a combination of human control and computational chance.  

Leo Villareal creates intricate sculptures that speak to the underlying rules and structures of systems for both gallery and public settings.  He is interested in exploring ways to express this through base units such as pixels and binary code.  Villareal is most known for two monumental public artworks: The Bay Lights, a site-specific light sculpture that occupies the entire western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and Illuminated River, a series of generative light sculptures installed on nine bridges over the River Thames in London.

CONTROLS:

“Z”: Journey along the Z-axis   

Cosmic Reef is graphics intensive & requires a WebGL2-enabled browser.


Cosmic Reef

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*Screens no longer only frame and display virtual spacetime. Connected together and surrounding us on all sides, their framings and displays have also opened, activated, and added another spatiotemporal dimension to the four in which all of us live.*
—Vivian Sobchack, *From Screen-Scape to Screen-Sphere: A Meditation in Medias Res*

An exploration of a technical concept I call "pixel overpainting."

Rasterized procedural brush strokes with low transparency slowly layer themselves over each other in a rhythmic loop until they achieve colorful equilibrium. They continue to overpaint themselves endlessly. The resulting color mixtures are then quantized and dithered to separate them into patches of pixels that recall the discrete materiality of the screen: a strictly digital variation on color field painting. The resulting texture is not a skeuomorphic grain but an overt reference to the universe of screens that surround us every day. Electric light arranged in a grid, fluttering and flickering everywhere all the time.

Please allow a few minutes for the colors to reach equilibrium.
For best results use Chrome browser with enabled webGL and hardware acceleration. Though it is encouraged to explore the subtleties in viewing the same pixels on different hardware and software to reflect on the subjectivity of contemporary computer graphics and the materiality of CPUs, GPUs, resolutions, pixel densities, browser APIs, and other medium-specific entropy.

Press '1', '2', '4', '8' to change pixel sizes.
Press 'p' or click canvas to pause/resume.
Press 's' to grab a still frame.
Press 'r' to re-paint.

Collectors will be eligible to receive a signed giclée print of a still frame of their mint as well as high-resolution looping media in GIF or lossless video format.
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RASTER

Random and anarchy, chaos and structurality. Jiometory No Compute is a living motion experimental study, a contemplative geometry organism that lives now and forever. Each individual units movement contributes and flows into a generative path for a greater purpose. Together they try to achieve a symbiosis, although an « ideal » computer program is very relative. Exploring domains of definitions and warping an input data-set leads to unexpected behaviors, sometimes surprising, often fascinating.   Interactions : Zoom-in / Zoom-out / Drag left and right / Best view in full-screen. 

ム サクイ デ ムチツジョ、 コントン ト コウゾウセイ。 Jiometory No Compute ハ、 セイブツテキ ナ ウゴキ ノ ジッケンテキ ケンキュウ デ アリ、 ゲンザイ ソシテ エイエン ニ セイチョウスル シコウテキ ナ キカガクテキ ユウキブツ デス。 ココ ノ ユニット ノ ウゴキ ハ、 オオキナ モクテキ ノ タメ ノ セイセイ ニ ナガレコミ、 ツカワレマス。 « リソウテキ ナ » コンピュータ プログラム ハ ヒジョウ ニ ソウタイテキ デス ガ、 ソレラ ハ キョウセイ ヲ タッセイシヨウ ト スル ノ デス。 テイギ ノ ドメイン ヲ タンサクシ、 ニュウリョク データセット ヲ ワープスル コト デ、 ヨキシナイ ドウサ ガ ハッセイシ、 トキニハ オドロク ベキ、 シバシバ ミリョクテキ ナ ドウサ ヲ ウミマス

Unique working GameBoy Cartridges certificate are redeemable for every holders of the Jiometory No Compute artworks to be displayed as a special and rare piece of hardware art. Because they are completely hand-made / crafted, those will be available in small batches for an additional fee, some more informations about the cartridges will be released after the sale.

Jiometory No Compute - ジオメトリ ハ ケイサンサレマセン

This edition of video artworks is the result of my research in video art from the 60s and 70s, especially early analog video synthesizers. These were heavy hardware machines capable of generating shapes and patterns from the ground up, with no external visual input. How could these machines generate such complexity by just manipulating electronic voltage? I decided to investigate this process. Although with modern technologies, Spectron shares the procedural logic with its analog ancestors.

Spectron

The universe in which we exist is an ever changing ebb and flow of energies that coalesce into observable patterns of repetition and harmony. By practicing mindfulness one can observe their part in this universal flux and achieve a powerful sense of connection to the whole.

Click / Touch to begin the audio-visual experience.

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