Since I started playing around with the simulation, I discovered interesting things about the images. While I do not understand the python code that created the physics simulation, I do somewhat understand what it is doing. First, I discovered that the images are a lot bigger than they seem on my screen. When I opened the image up in Adobe Illustrator, I found that the vector points stretch well beyond the artboard. (Depending on the design the simulation created, it went even further than my screen could handle.) The artboard is only 11.11in x 11.11in, which definitely made the full particle design bigger and more complex than what I was originally seeing.
This is a screen shot of what Adobe Illustrator looked like. The small white box is the artboard, what was seen on the screen when I first saw the simulation running.
As I started to edit the images, I took out the excess vector points that went off of the artboard. Partly because they were not as visually interesting as the rest of the piece, but also because I wanted to keep it authentic to my first experience seeing the simulation. With the first piece that I edited, I found that it was similar to a project I did in my undergrad career where we changed an imaged into polygonal geometric designs.
This is the polygonal design I created based off of a doodle I made in high school. I always like going back to my old artworks when doing something different, or just in general for inspiration. The original was done in pencil and ball point pen on a lined piece of notebook paper. Then I recreated it on water color paper with water color paints, pen/ink, and salt. The salt was put strategically onto the surface before and after I was painting to get cool effects of color and texture. I find that reinterpreting an image different ways was an open way of exploring new techniques and skills that I would not have been able to gain in teacher-centered lessons or “transmittable” experiences, the experience I had with materials would not have been as rich. But, what should be noted is that I did this on my own. I was not prompted/inspired by a teacher to make an image like this or recreate it in watercolor. The only result of teacher influence was to make it into a polygonal design, which was originally assigned to us as a polygonal portrait of a person. I have always been a student to take creative assignments into my own hands to make it more fun and more me, so that’s what I did. I hope that I could empower my students to do the same in open exploration so they could find their own techniques like I did.
Instead of creating the shapes myself, I was selecting the shapes made from the program and coloring them how I saw fit. As I was doing this, I found that some of the shapes were hidden behind the others. In other words, the simulation was showing me a two-dimensional image, when it was really a three-dimensional “thing.” (Or was this dependent on the order that I turned on the visual filters on the simulation? Or was it the way that the file was being interpreted?) I am hoping that as I continue my side project, I understand how these results should be understood as objects rather than a flat digital thing. Maybe, I could interpret it to the point where I could create a 3D printed model of one of them.
“Particle 8”
Below are pictures of some of the edits I made. The first four are of the same particle design. Each image shows the different layers of the image so you can fully see what they look like. With this edit, “particle 8,” I tried to make it a slight variation from the original image. Each layer/section of shapes were colored in various shades of their original color. I also arranged the colors so that it would give the images look more three-dimensional.
In this version, I made the yellow vector drawing into black holes.
In this version, I made the yellow vector drawing into black holes while showing another layer with the yellow vector lines to define the shapes.