Forces
produced by: Prentice Whitlow
Introduction
The work is separated into 3 sections, each with an initial state followed by a slight change in conditions.
1) Boxes scaling/ boxes scaling and rotating
2) Bars, external pressure/ Bars internal momentum
3) Falling bars /self-organizing bars
Concept and background research
With one exception, I wasn’t inspired by any special image worth noting here. I tried to do things that I felt were achievable and only in some instances took inspiration from elsewhere. However, though it was not fully intentional, the work does appear to have a common theme: internal and external forces. Each section depicts 2D primitives having some forceful action done to them followed by my understanding of actions they would take, had they any agency. Whereas each initial state tends towards chaos, the shapes eventually reach for self-organization and order without ever truly reaching it. I'd like to think of this as a kind of manifestation of whatever forces and pressures I felt during the process of making this work. I think the notion of forces emerged on the back of my experiences as a dancer, always preoccupied with movement and the energy they exert. I say preoccupied because the thought creeps into so much of my waking life. Some of the work was inspired by what I would consider completely mundane experiences. For example, the second section where multi-colored bars move up and down the stairs is inspired by an iron gate I passed on the way home one day. The vertical bars of the gate were positioned so that the top of each, if connected by an imaginary line, would form a wave. From that image I imagined two feelings of movement: 1) That an external force would move the bars into this undulation; 2) That the bars themselves would shift and move of an internal force. In the projection, I first visualize the external influence, a kind of hammering force as would be required to weld iron. Afterward, I attempt to recreate the natural undulating movement first observed in the gate. It is in this way that I approached each section of the work, as subconscious interpretations of movement iterated in code.
Technical
Software:
Open Frameworks and related libraries i.e. OfPiMapper
Excel, for plotting
Stair dimensions: 190 x 285 x 285
Future development
The core code for this project provides a decent scaffold for further exploration. As the images are rendered by rows and columns it would be interesting to add more detail and intricacy to the shapes displayed therein.
Self evaluation
The technical implementation of the project became much more imperative than the concept itself and an all honesty, I feel the final projected image suffers for it. I am, however, proud enough of the technical execution to accept the inevitably simple images the code produced. For example, I was quite worried about creating multiple files and adding more work for myself and the team when it came time to compile our projects. The solution was to make the program as self-contained as possible. I wrote all of my classes within the header file and set each section to display via a timer.
Inspiration
Necessary-disorder tutorials -- Necessarydisorder
https://necessarydisorder.wordpress.com/
openFrameworksでアート -- yodaaa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRXhMAaVDh0
References
openFrameworks tutorial – 041 sine & cosine -- Lewis Lepton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31fSjovpu0&list=PL4neAtv21WOmrV8z9rSzL20QpdLU1zJLr&index=43
cplusplus.com -- Arrays
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/arrays/
cplusplus.com -- Polymorphism
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/polymorphism/
cplusplus.com -- class template std:: vector