Pathfinders is an interactive generative drawing project. The script sets color palettes, brush textures, a unique avatar, and assorted start screen layouts from token data. When viewing Pathfinders, left-click the starting image to erase your canvas and watch the deterministically chosen brush trail across the screen. When you are satisfied with the output, left-click again to pause, right-click and save your image, then share your results with others.

Pathfinders

Particles of light dance to create ephemeral forms that depict the formation of our celestial souls.

*Worlds Within* explores the aesthetics of the invisible as part of the artist’s ongoing research of light in motion. As various forces influence more than 500,000 particles in real time, a dynamic “stardust sculpture” emerges, each reflecting a spirit’s unique personality through forms such as swirling currents, dancing flames, glowing filaments, and neural pathways.

Building upon the use of organic form in *Bubble Blobby*, evocative color in *Glow*, and meditative motion in *Light Beams*, *Worlds Within* additionally simulates simple yet beautiful phenomena in the natural world like gravitation and chromatic aberration to reveal how hidden forces on the micro scale affect the whole in surprising ways.

*Worlds Within* is inspired by Cai Guo-Qiang's pyrotechnics, Thomas Wilfred's kinetic light art, and outer space phenomena. Drawing on these influences to create a unique visual aesthetic, *Worlds Within* gives the viewer a glimpse of the intangible: the stark black background disorients the viewer's perception of setting, scale, and dimension—much like James Turrell’s immersive light works—and draws attention to the center of the frame, where something mysterious and beautiful emerges.

#### Shortcuts
* **q:** toggle quality to lower resolution (default is high)
* **m:** toggle rendering mode to time-based rendering, some frames may be skipped (default is frame-based rendering, every frame is rendered)
* **mouse click + drag:** rotate view
* **spacebar:** pause/resume
* **s:** save screenshot

Note: requires a WebGL2-enabled browser and a decent GPU.

Worlds Within

Hashtractors are a collection of generative renderings of various parametric equations commonly know as "strange attractors". These equations are at the heart of chaos theory; a branch of mathematics focused on the study of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. A selection of 29 different equations has been made for this collection. Hash data is used as their parameters.

Hashtractors

Compression has been the driving force behind the image-based internet since the early 90s. No compression, no Netscape, no social media, no NFTs. The JPEG compression has specifically enabled photography-based imagery on the net. It has always served that purpose and over time become the de facto default for showing high quality imagery online. But compression always leaves a trace, which has become the lens through which the network sees the world of uploaded images.

"A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience." ― Mark Rothko

JPEG tries to create an image programatically fully expressing that signature compression. An image that is like empty made from barely nothing, yet fully present in its blazing appearance. A work deeply material, expressing itself through the language of code and codec only. This is not a JPEG depicting an image. The JPEG is the image itself.

Delving into the depths and peculiarities of the digital, tethered to art history, JPEG found its way to the surface. Generated color fields are utilised to trigger the compressing algorithm, resulting in a world of raw visual entities. Where the abstract expressionists cut out the depiction in painting, aiming to let the artist convey pure emotion, JPEG cuts out the artist's emotion and lets it emerge from within the algorithm. Carefully you could categorize the work as *compressionism*. An art form where the machine speaks in its own raw language, but nevertheless makes a direct touch to our human heart.

JPEG is a collection of generative images in the JPEG file format. The work tries to break with the idea of the fixed file format, therefor creating the JPEG entirely from code using no image material whatsoever. The individual JPEGs are generated responsively at the moment of viewing based on the token hash as a random seed. You can literally drag the JPEG out from the browser window.

JPEG pays tribute to interface culture, and as such the work is responsive and not scaling. When the work is resized, the work is again rendered and compressed. When viewed smaller, details will disappear, yet the composition stays recognisable. It’s like stepping back to see a work from further away. The choice of color wanders from monochromatic tones to the brutality of complete randomness and everything in between.

In honour of the blockchain and the web, the work is written in vanilla JavaScript, using no dependancies, and generates a standard JPEG. This way the file is downloadable, aiming for a materiality that comes as close as possible to the standard browser.

JPEG

Paths is an animated journey across various subterranean and aboveground environments. To fully experience the project, you need to see it in high resolution with a capable GPU. Make sure that your browser uses your dedicated graphics card if any, and that you get a good frame rate. Control keys: 1-4 (change speed), 9 (fill aspect ratio), 0 (original aspect ratio), space-bar (play/pause)

Art Blocks Presents

Paths #213

Darien Brito

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