Many things in the world are perceptible but not visible. Some things we can only feel, but not understand. Some things touch us and move us deeply, but not physically. We can only confirm some things through experience.

Qi is believed to be part of everything that exists as a "life force" or "spiritual energy" that pervades the natural world. It cannot be seen, but in some paintings, the artist creates the flow of Qi to present a vivid world. Artists use Qi to show the presence of life in their artwork, and it’s also believed to be a metaphor for the energy that powers our body and spirit.

Metaphysics is a generative system to simulate an organic world, to make the audience feel the Qi. Every single object is gradually deformed, shifted, and rotated in an attempt to find a pattern in the chaos that describes the workings of the life force and constitutes a living entity. It is inspired by the fluent Tai Chi movement, Cloud Hand. It develops with organic rotations and movements, like practicing Tai Chi on the canvas which makes the generative system alive.

That movement composes this piece, and once we feel the invisible vital life force by the physics of the algorithm, could we say it is a process of metaphysics?

This project uses p5js.

Press [S] to download a high resolution jpeg.
Press [A] to see the slow animation.
Press [R] to download the animation.
Press [B] to switch border/borderless mode.

Metaphysics

**VOXΞL** is a real-time, interactive 3D generative art project. Each iteration is a collage of shapes, colors and animations laid out in a voxel grid of various size and complexity. The visuals are rendered on every frame allowing smooth animation and the ability to rotate the camera around the 3D scene by dragging and zooming by scrolling. This creates a more immersive feel, gives the viewer control over the artwork and leverages what makes Artblocks unique by generating all the outputs entirely through code running live in the browser.

In all my work, I seek to blur the lines between the digital and the physical world by making 3D digital sculptures that feel (and look) like they could live in the physical world. That’s why with all my artworks I provide a way to visualize each interaction through Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality interfaces.

In this project I tried to utilize all the technical skills I acquired over the years and used a combination of 3D objects composition, custom grid layout, GLSL shaders, perlin noise and custom post processing all powered by ThreeJS.

The features give a wide variety of outputs and rarity while retaining a common visual language throughout the collection.

---

## Controls
Click and drag to rotate the camera around the artwork.
Scroll to zoom the camera in and out.

---

## To View in AR
Go to [jeanvascript.com/voxel/xr/](https://www.jeanvascript.com/voxel/xr/) on a WebAR compatible browser like Google Chrome on Android and [XRViewer](https://labs.mozilla.org/projects/webxr-viewer/) on iOS and click the "AR" button.

## To View in VR
Go to [jeanvascript.com/voxel/xr/](https://www.jeanvascript.com/voxel/xr/) on an WebVR compatible browser and device like the Meta Quest browser on Quest 2 and click the "VR" button.

VOXΞL

Darwin’s Orchid wasn’t discovered by Darwin, but he correctly hypothesized that its long blooms, up to a foot and a half tall, coevolved with a moth with a very long tongue—just long enough to extract its nectar. This flower embodies the great variety of and fascination with the orchid family. Orchids come in all shapes, sizes, colors, textures and scents—perhaps this is why they’ve entranced cultures dating back well over five millennia, becoming symbols of virility, beauty, peace and prosperity in the process. Named “Cattleya” after my first rare orchid, this work is my Ode to Orchids—a mystical flower that brings me endless delight.

Read more about my [inspiration & process↗](https://bensnell.medium.com/7c943673d54f)

*Notes:*
*— This project is intended to be run on modern devices, operating systems and browsers. Older ones may yield undesired or undefined behaviors.*
*— This script includes a modified version of [glsl-fast-gaussian-blur](https://github.com/Jam3/glsl-fast-gaussian-blur), licensed under the MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2015 Jam3.*

Cattleya

"Foliage" is a moment of pause. The project is born from the futile attempt to catch a breath of wind, the one that no one sees but everyone notices when the leaves hang trembling. Inspired by long days near the Rio de la Plata studying the wind, this series of 250 foliage is an exploration of how angles and colors can generate the illusion of movement and harmony. "Foliage" is inspired on wind data visualizations where the use of angles and vectors speak of a trajectory. Winds, like data, travel through our world leaving a trace;  this time hosted immutably on the Ethereum Blockchain.

Foliage

Enchiridion is inspired by the Enchiridion Physicae Restitutae by Jean D'Espagnet which rejected the idea of the empyrean, claiming that all natural things exist in unity. This is represented through geometric forms which show structure, unity, and causation vs. the amorphous forms of Empyrean.

Art Blocks Presents

Enchiridion #274

Generative Artworks

More in Art Blocks Presents

Metaphysics

Jinyao Lin

VOXΞL

JEANVASCRIPT

Cattleya

Ben Snell

Foliage

Falko

Art

Company

Learn