la caverna deals with the impossibility of seeing the absolute truth given our subjective minds and our subjective world. The title is a tribute to Plato’s allegory of the Cave, included in his work Republic. It does not only deal with the fact that what we perceive is affected by our senses and our mental state, which is a function of our genetic inheritance plus our life experiences, current and past, but it also is a reflection of today’s world, where a fabricated reality is no longer distinguishable from what it really is. What is reality today?

The artwork creates a set of basic volumes, inspired in the platonic forms, which represent a potential ideal reality. It then presents a distorted view of that reality through several steps of distortion. The artwork also presents, in separate tokens, the undistorted reality and a representation of the layer that transforms that reality into what the observer can see in the first token.  The two tokens that represent these other elements will be available to redeem for free at a later stage to collectors who own the first piece (this token) at the time of claiming the rest of the triptych. The three tokens are included in the price of the first token’s mint. 

The artwork allows to refine the view (simulating more light, creating stronger images) pressing "r". You can save the current image pressing "s". You can decrease/increase the resolution appending in live view the URL parameter ?globalResK=2 (for example). By default, globalResK is 1. You can go as high as your graphics card can handle.

Made with vanilla javascript and glsl, no additional libraries or external dependencies. Thanks to @greggman @iquilezles @piterpasma for sharing knowledge about webgl and raymarching. I hope I know something someday to share that little bit.

Tested to work fine on Chrome, Safari, Brave on macos, Chrome, Safari, Firefox iOS, Edge Windows. Firefox macos fails to render the image correctly. Please check before you purchase.

reality

la caverna

Drawn from the intuitive nature of creativity, "Naïve" is a tribute to innate artistry. With inspiration from with the vibrant hues and raw forms of renowned Ukrainian primitivists, particularly Maria Prymachenko, whose work inspires in me the purity, simplicity, and fearlessness of a child's worldview. 

Venturing into generative art, I identify deeply with the naive artist's journey—entering uncharted territories with raw emotion and curiosity. Embracing this naïveté, I have merged the mathematical rigidity of coding with curiosity and play to form unexpected shapes, colors, and solutions. This work celebrates those delightful intersections of intuition with technical precision of generative art. 

Interestingly, the tumultuous events in Ukraine played a pivotal role in guiding me back to the arts. Generative art became that voice, a medium where I could channel my research, discoveries, and inspirations.

Naïve

**Axo is an abstraction of the human mental condition.** 

Each work has neurons. Each neuron has a nucleus at its source and fires electrical signals searching for synaptic connections. 

The signals, or in this case, pixels, act in accordance with the current mental state, which periodically enters states of stress, awareness, re-centering, reprogramming, and more.

The work explores the brain’s ability to change its synaptic pathways, materializing our cognitive flexibility and rigidity, inviting us to consider what barriers prohibit growth and positive change.  **Axo** is part observation of my own mental state and part research, analysis, and reflection. 

We are all a node on the societal network. The effects of our individual state ripple out impacting the network as a whole. As such, each **Axo** can be connected with and influence other works in the collection. Awareness can spread and evolve the network, or stress can cause chaos.  

**Axo** opens a dialogue on personal growth and societal change at the intersection of cognitive science, art, and technology, inviting us to envision a better existence and a harmonious network, underlining that this utopia is only a shift in perspective away. 

**Axo** is fully responsive & built using my pixel-easing algorithm. Pure javascript. 19kb.

**Interactivity**

Each Axo has a default state, though the viewer can also take control and influence its state of mind using the following keys:

"a" => awareness
Toggles awareness

"f" => freak out
Toggles a freak out.

"p" => stuck in past
Toggles being stuck in the past. May not do much while in awareness.

"c" => centered
Toggles centering the state of mind.

"d" => disabled fate
Disabled fate disables any auto-state changes, so the state of mind will only change with interaction.

"w" => willed experience
Axo can be curated by the viewer and replayed later. By pressing W,  all interactions up to that point will be collected and the work will reload with a new link that can be saved and replayed at any time. 

"0-9" => rigid pathways at specified reprogramming

Axo’s current state can be preserved at any of the first ten states of mind. If a viewer were to press 8, Axo would flow through the first seven changes, then stop at the 8th state change. 

"z" => scale up
"x" => scale down

Scale up/down to view in more detail, improve performance, or just gain a different perspective.

"s" => save a still

Each Axo can be curated using the keyboard, query string, and/or programmatically posting messages from a host page.

Axo is an art project by S. Ryan O'Connor, aka jiwa.

Kubikino is a project by artist Carolina Melis, with the support of creative coder Enrico Penzo. The work is informed by notions of choreography, modular pattern composition and character design.

Kubikino is an idiosyncratic face, made of a combination of graphical elements and colours generated by code. Using an essential library of geometries - all deriving from the circle - and primary tones, the code randomly creates new faces resembling human physiognomy, animals and traditional masks.

Through the deliberate reference to a face, Kubikino prompts contemplation on the traditional notions of identity, similarity, and persona, as well as the ongoing need to establish one's own representation within a community - from traditional masks to digital avatars. For centuries, human identity has been a source of cultural fascination, with the word "identity" stemming from the Latin term "identitas," signifying both "sameness" and “oneness.”

Inspired by Bruno Munari's "Faces," a collection of abstract portraits created using basic geometric shapes and lines, Kubikino reflects on the simplicity, playfulness, and power of design to communicate across cultures and generations.

Drawing upon the influential dance theories of Rudolf Laban and Merce Cunningham, Kubikino's device process for the creation of its faces is underpinned by a sophisticated framework of modular pattern composition. The project's generated output is organised into a grid-based structure, where each section corresponds to a phrase, and the relationship between the various sections collectively generates the final composition. Referencing Laban’s Movement Analysis, each section is paraphrasing LMA's four key components: body (loop), shape (direction), dynamic (colour), space (relationship within the space).

Kubikino also adopts the principles of "chance" and "structured improvisation" articulated by avant-garde pioneers John Cage and Merce Cunningham in the 1960s. The Kubikino identity is constructed from a selected array of animated graphics, rules, and paradigms that correspond to motifs, scores, and ensembles found in conventional art forms such as dance, music, and paintings.

Kubikino

This is my algorithmic love letter to a forefather of mathematical art: **M. C. Escher**.

To commemorate 125 years since his birth, my goal was to honor Escher’s enduring influence by reworking his iconic motifs into a medium that embraces mathematics as much as he did.

I gave it the name **Escherly Seeds** because its meaning is three-fold:

-	_Metaphorical._ This work can be seen as representing the seeds that Escher planted in the minds of the artistic community, and I make several references to his work. Concave and Convex (1955) and Waterfall (1961) were the main inspirations for up to three distinct optical illusions hidden within this algorithm. Expect Escher’s love of polyhedra – a few of which can be seen in Stars (1948) – to make appearances too!

-	_Arboreal._ This metaphor is illustrated as a tree with surrealist botanical components. It starts out, drawn on paper, as a root network from which a stem sprouts, branching into a fully developed crown with leaves, flowers, and/or fruit. Flowers are depicted as enlarged polyhedra with special properties, and fruit are cyclical structures inspired by the iconic Penrose triangle. Fruit can also, on occasion, be ripe with its own seeds, thus completing its life cycle. The pencil-to-3D effect is a reference to Reptiles (1943) and Drawing Hands (1948), except I take the metamorphosis to the present – becoming fully chromatic, dynamic, and interactive. The seed is planted in Escher's world, and blossoms into ours.

-	_Cryptographic._ Generative art is, in a way, the craft of making pseudo-random _art_ generators. Each output is the result of a cascade of calculations caused by one unique numerical seed, and in this case, it just happens to be an “Escherly” seed! For those curious about the details, I tried to avoid excessively obfuscating the code.

The viewer is encouraged to play with the artwork! In an effort to make the tree feel alive, I used an equation called the Kuramoto model which, most notably, mimics the flashing patterns observed in species of synchronous fireflies. Each cube is animated by an internal “clock” which is weakly coupled to its nearest neighbors. Interacting with these clocks will cause them to align, giving you the ability to synchronize or desynchronize certain areas of the tree.

Thank you to all who helped me along the way, no matter the weight of your contribution.

Special thanks: Jiahui Cai, Vincent Cohen, Daniel Bothner

Escherly Seeds

Lumina engages in the delicate interplay of curved, organic lines and abstract forms, weaving a surreal narrative filled with rhythm and dynamism. It illustrates dreamy imagery of cosmic phenomena such as electromagnetic waves, magnetic reconnection, and gravitational pull. In its composition, Lumina balances fluid and structured elements, vibrant and muted tones. The artwork’s glitchy and distorted textures, reminiscent of cosmic noise and stellar interference, further enhance its spatial narrative, offering a visual echo of the cosmic phenomena.

Lumina lies in its balanced integration of organic and digital elements. The first layer of the artwork, crafted with p5.js and a fBm shader, forms an organic texture, adding a swirl to give dynamism and generates diverse color palettes; establishing a visual field. This organic layer is then intertwined with a digital layer, where a custom fragment shader introduces subtle distortions and glitches, adding depth, complexity and luminance to the pieces. The inclusion of noise (and its artifacts) and various mathematical functions imbue the collection with a dreamlike ambiance.

**URL Parameters:**
?resolution=5000  :  to render as 2812x5000 px
?resolution=4000  :  to render as 2250x4000 px 
?resolution=3000  :  to render as 1687x3000 px (default)

**Press [S] in live view to save as .png**

This work involves intensive GPU processing. It's advisable to use modern hardware and ensure your browser's hardware acceleration is enabled for optimal performance. Using the Chrome browser on a desktop equipped with a high-end GPU is highly recommended.

See website for more details about the collection.

Lumina

Drawing inspiration from the intricacies of nature and the physics theories that model it, "Fluiroso" (derived from "Fluidos Ruidosos") delves into the mesmerizing depths of Fluid Dynamics. This is achieved by implementing an accelerated solver for the Navier–Stokes partial differential equations.

Initial density and velocity are placed leveraging Perlin noise, and a selection of up to ten random velocity sources are positioned throughout the area. Augmented by other parameters such as boundary conditions and viscosity, the algorithm embarks on a dynamic journey tracing the solver's outputs over time. 

The resulting animation renders a delicate dance of brush strokes where the fluid becomes painter. The culmination is a repertoire of abstract pieces that evoke movement and invite viewers to discern emerging shapes and silhouettes.

Once the animation pauses to spotlight the artwork, viewers can engage with the piece and press 'p' to restart the movement. While many pieces continually evolve, others settle into a graceful equilibrium.

la caverna

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Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez

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