A Texas Thistle

Image development for a poster. Theme to address the alienating and discouraging situation afflicting humans crossing arbitrary borders. Families divided, treated as enemies, alien invaders. Laura and I worked to reveal something beautiful, something isolated and along, but still presenting wonder. The Texas Thistle, Cirsium texanum, with its fine spines to bring a prickle to our hands, manifests it fervent growth in a delicately unfurling flower. spines softened, colors iridescent and thick. A subject and a medium for play, a lonely beautiful object, trapped and connected.

ALIEN, something unknown, frightening and challenging to a way of life.

Remembering influences, and the current under the film, our fear of the other.

The final poster is to be offset printed in just two colors, cyan and orange, contrast.

Distorted by its isolation, the beauty is smeared and transformed, thinned out.

Protected from within, isolated from without.

The final poster sent for production brings the child back into focus. A space of a dream of a memory, something to escape into, or perhaps escape through. A shared space of connection between humans in a region of the earth with a shared beauty, communal wonder at the vibrancy of life. Share and be free.

Hyphae Simulation mk3

Pushed the system a little further, now a larger organizing network. The particles can cross, entangle, and merge into more complex rhyzomatic connections. I am interested in exploring the organizational voids within the mesh, mixing multiple layers of these simulations into a vast network.

Hyphae Simulation mk2

The system evolves with two particle systems interacting. The original mk1 system is invisible, but active as a force field dynamic emitter, pulsing and reorganizing the second particle drawing systems. Color and light pulse like a sea creature as the speed and acceleration of the particles change. This one uses four layers in aftereffects: point, multi-point, cloud, and mesh. Each layer is just a playblast from Maya (series of screenshots) with some transparency and blending mode manipulations to amplify the colors and exposure. The background sounds are Ambient Server music from Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Each of these tests produces geometry artifacts as well, future posts will look at the digital physical translation along with the limits and challenges of particles as material, maybe even some ways to transform these into more tectonic systems. @wip!