Netlogo and butterflies

I started off playing with as many different models as I had time for. I particularly liked the virus model, but couldn't think of anything interesting to do with it.
Eventually I tried out the mimicry simulation. It was fairly easy to grasp what was going on and the results were interesting.

However, the simulation relied upon asexual reproduction. I wondered whether the simulation would hold up if I modified the reproduction model to approximate a simple sexual version. To do this, I took the existing behavior for birds eating butterflies (i.e. a butterfly checks around it for birds, potentially gets eaten) and switched it to if there is a butterfly of the same species nearby, mate with it. I also reduced the number of butterflies allowed in a population in order to make it easier to see.
Unfortunately, this had disastrous results for the viceroy moths.

I realized this was due to the reproduction chance still being set to 4% as was pertinent when the population was reproducing asexually. I bumped this to a whopping 50% (not truly realistic, considering the small percentage of insects that survive to adulthood in a real-world situation) and watched as the same result of the original simulation unfolded.

The making of Treaty

First, I cut 4 pieces of posterboard to the dimensions of a large playing card. I then sketched each of the four kings using Bicycle playing cards as reference. This took way longer than I expected, probably because I was so picky about getting the measurements correct.

 

Be sure to let your cat "help" at this stage because he will feel left out if you don't let him give input.

Next, I inked each of the four drawings using a Sharpie marker. This allowed me more detail than I could produce with my amateur painting skills.

After that it was a matter of painting. Painting took a million years.

But I finished it.

It nearly killed me to have to cut them up after all that work, but it was in the cards (aha).

I drew one card each from two decks and swapped the squares that matched the suit and value. I did this through one cycle of the deck.

I could have continued at this point, but I liked the aesthetic of the kings still being somewhat recognizable, albeit rather mixed up. If I were to do this project again, I would print them rather than paint them. I wouldn't have as high a quality of product, but I'd have more time to devote to playing around with the process.

The finished product!

And bonus: the making of VIDEO!

Chance-based art concept revamp

When we had our second review, I realized the limiting factor in the piece was meaning. There wasn't anything there. Rather than make up a concept to suit (aha) the existing concept (ie ridiculing the monarchy like they're in the stocks and we're in the French Revolution) I took some time to consider what we talked about in class.

One of the things we discussed was the visuals of the end result. Given enough time, all we'd have left is a black or red piece of paper. Without some story behind it, that would be a really disappointing product after so much work. Professor Gallanter mentioned the idea of entropy, of the trend of things towards chaos. He suggested the idea that rather than painting over the picture, the audience could instead rearrange the pieces. I shrugged off the idea too quickly because I couldn't see how it could be conceivably done except on the computer.

After class, I started thinking over the potential meanings behind such a movement. It could symbolize confusion, or inner turmoil. I wanted to bring in the leadership connotations of the Kings of the four suits. Then I thought about what could happen if I were to instead take pieces from one king and switch it with another. Then we're bringing in the ideas of mixing cultures and ideas, the sort of cultural drift, social melding that occurs when two countries comingle.

If we were to modify the original concept to draw from two decks, and the suit of each card selects a King and the number refers to the row from which we select, we will be left with a visually interesting piece on top of the more robust concept. I am making the decision to leave the border which contains the suit and K. This will result in the final card being recognizable only by name and a few remaining pieces, similar to the concept of a country that has in essence merged with its neighbors, retaining only its most ingrained traditions and customs.

Chance-based pre-production thought process

To start, I went through a series of concepts to make on the computer.
I started with the idea of randomly generated snowflakes generated on a mouse click. After the class on bio-inspired art, I'm glad I didn't pursue it, because I understand a much better way to pursue the idea now, if I choose to.

I also kicked around the idea of a sort of generated Piet Mondrion piece using a randomized mip-mapping sort of concept. After sketching out some potential results, though, I didn't particularly like how it looked.

I started thinking about dice rolls and what kind of results I could get from that, like rolling for coordinates on a grid and filling in a square in a rolled-for color. I considered various materials like poster foam or wood. The aesthetic, though, seemed like it would be boring and the process seemed convoluted.
I also considered simulating dice rolls on the computer and generating a 3D sculpture wherein one of six sides of a cube would be selected to place another cube at one-half size, then another dice roll would generate a half size cube on one of those sides, etc. for a decided on number of times. The set would then go back to root and repeat. After some consideration however, this struck me as more like a fractal?

I moved on to the idea of using cards as my chance generator. I played around with the idea of the suit being a kind of coordinate in a grid, followed by the numerical value. I thought about using each of the face cards as one of the suits and doing something to that card based on what value that card had. I decided against using the face cards because there are technically only 3 face cards and the Joker would be the odd man out.
After discarding the faces, I wondered what else could be represented by the suits. I considered the symbolism associated with each (spade~death, diamond~wealth) and considered what else could be connected via that association. I considered art pieces that could coincide, like the Birth of Venus for hearts and Saturn Eating his Son for spade. I wondered what could be the result of pulling a card and thought back to Duchamp's LHOOQ and the contemptuous treatment of his improvised material. I thought about how I could make it into almost a game for the audience, to draw a card and get to desecrate this famous piece of art. They could throw a dart for every number on the card and make their mark on the piece.

When I pitched the concept to my live-in sounding board, I was asked what purpose the cards serve. I couldn't easily answer that question, so I wondered what would happen aesthetically if I took the off-handed concept of a card-based chance 'game' and made it as much about the cards as possible. If the art pieces were cards, and you choose a card to dictate what card the audience can target and then they get to stamp it with the shape of the suit. After class on Tuesday, I scrapped the idea of the darts/gun because it wasn't adding to the piece.