*Arcadia* is a homage to the fridge-worthy landscape art of our youth. Childhood techniques of creating art are re-imagined by the scribbles of a nostalgic, computer-assisted mind.

**Spacebar**: Skip animation and load final image (useful when rendering in high resolutions)
**Up arrow**: Speed scribbles up (default speed is the highest)
**Down arrow**: Slow scribbles down

Arcadia

Timepiece is an exploration in objective and subjective time. Each Timepiece is a dynamic figure with different graphic and kinetic characteristics that give it a unique personality — from calm and subtle to fast and playful. The piece is a clock that runs in real-time, and the form is generated by the positions of the clock hands, which appear when clicked and reveal the underlying mechanics of the piece. The thumbnail of each piece reflects the time it was minted (in UTC). 

Timepiece

Abstract impressions of alien landscapes, aerial photographs and geometric structures sequence into being, collapsing onto itself.

Press 'h' to  enable full internal resolution (intense)
Press space bar to relaunch animation
Press 'e' to enable endless displacement mode

Best viewed with Chrome and a modern desktop. Reduced animation on Firefox.

10% of the primary sale net proceeds will be split with a charity focusing on environment and a local art nonprofit

Collapsed Sequence

DIVERGENCE
Divergence, a never-ending abstract motion work, reacts to audio and touch inputs.  Dive into stacks of deterministic layers to explore emerging patterns, and fine-tune the audio reactivity to your preferences.  

You may wish to use the controls to wander within Divergence until the aesthetic feels right to you, or complements your audio input.  Navigating the art in this way gives a tangible window into my artistic process.  My aesthetic is influenced by the music I listen to as I code. I enjoy experimenting and looking for the art in the algorithm.  This can mean playing with overarching ideas, but also making many small changes until I find consistent visual appeal over a range of outputs.  

Divergence exhibits animations changing over time in expanding, textural layers.  It elaborates on concepts I’ve developed in previous works: my approach to color in phase; linear motion in Parade; interlacing lines and expansion/contraction in Kaleidoscope; and the noise textures of Sift.  Newly explored is continuous animation with touch and audio inputs, which affect the viewing position in time and space.  

A common quip in the Art Blocks community is that motion art has a penalty. Many enjoy a final product that is printable to frame at home.  As technology advances, I believe it is equally important to create work that can only exist on a screen, and is unique to digital art. Larger displays are catching up to the artistic space and becoming more accessible, but I also want my work to be approachable immediately.  Keeping the code lean and performant allows it to run well on a range of screen sizes and processor powers, from mobile devices to multi-story displays.  There has been discussion that a body of motion work takes a long time to sift through, as it needs to be viewed live.  In consideration of this, I made Divergence immersive, rather than a static experience. I want the extra time spent with it to be fun and entertaining.  

Usage: Navigate left/right to traverse the timeline; navigate up/down to travel through the layers and expand/contract the patterns.  Please see “Display Notes” for further instructions (user input, audio reactivity, url parameters).  Accessibility is important to me, so Divergence accepts inputs from touch, keyboard, mouse, and gaming controllers with an analog stick.  

*Photosensitive seizure warning: These artworks contain flashing colors and moving patterns.

Divergence

```
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
  ___ _  _____ _   _  ___  __  __  ___  ___ ___ _  _ ___ 
 / __| |/ / __| | | |/ _ \|  \/  |/ _ \| _ \ _ \ || / __|
 \__ \ ' <| _|| |_| | (_) | |\/| | (_) |   /  _/ __ \__ \
 |___/_|\_\___|\___/ \___/|_|  |_|\___/|_|_\_| |_||_|___/

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

```

A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that were necessary in the original. They are used widely in architecture, product design, and perhaps most familiarly in user interfaces. Think: desktop icons like trash cans or notepads. SKEUOMORPHS is a meditation on this digital tradition. 

SKEUOMORPHS picks up where RASTER left off as an another exploration of the materiality of pixels and rasterized imagery. Here the study of pixels narrows in on the shallow depth of on-screen interfaces and the play of low-res figure-ground effects. Moments of skeuomorphism where the 2-dimensional plane of the screen becomes slightly 3-dimensional through beveling or drop-shadows are extracted and used as abstract painterly details. These elements that are typically used to make computation and interfaces more familiar become unfamiliar on the canvas, suggesting the possibility of an aesthetic between abstraction and realism.

SKEUOMORPHS employs recurring themes and techniques from my art practice: limited color palettes, low-res chunky pixels, dithering, and physics simulation. It uses a specific kind of dithering called R-sequence dither developed by Martin Roberts. Like traditional Bayer matrix-based dithering, this technique produces a patterned image akin to retro video games and early computer screens. In this project, the R-dither pattern results in a woven textile-like texture, which recalls the long relationship between computing and weaving. The canvas negotiates two scales simultaneously: that of the dithered pixel (rendered at 1/1024th of the canvas height) and the simulated particle that acts as a brush stroke (rendered at 1/256th of the canvas height). The two resolutions work together to produce a cohesive texture that is neither pretending to be a retrograde screen nor an analog material but something in between. Similar to RASTER, the goal is to investigate new avenues for digital aesthetics that rely on a combination of historical techniques and innovative practices.

Use mouse or touch controls to interact.
Press 's' to grab a still frame.

Collectors will be eligible to receive a signed archival giclée print of their mint.

Art Blocks Presents

Arcadia #109

Zachariah Watson

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