cyclic: outwitted by a 1000 particles
I have to admit, I’m hopelessly fumble-fingered in vector drawing. I never get the curves right, somehow they’re not smooth, not natural looking.
The funny thing is that a 1000 particles chasing each other from random starting positions seem to manage this quite nicely. Initial jagged chaos swiftly evolves into flowing curves, continuously trying to simplify themselves. Guess I’m not a sufficiently complex, self-interacting system 
Anyway I’m rather pleased with this construct. Pointless overkill makes me happy. The construct and its code can be found here. There’s no interaction beyond resetting with a click of the mouse.
Update: Lucas Tamarit pointed out, somewhat uh… pointedly, that this piece is very similar to ’sandtraveller’ by Jared Tarbell. Check this and the rest of his work out here. I’ve got to agree there’s definitely a resemblance. However, I’ve checked out the code and the mechanics behind ‘cyclic’ are really different from ’sandtraveller’, as is the rendering technique. I invite everybody else to make the comparison.
Not every painting of a sunflower is a Van Gogh forgery 
Tags: cyclic, particles, Processing, steering
July 1st, 2008 at 18:05
Let’s say that you didn’t know the original work by Jared Tarbell, and that this is the reason why you didn’t even mention his name.
http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/sandTraveler/index.php
July 1st, 2008 at 21:42
Yipes, the wording is way too close for comfort. Even the number of particles is identical… and they chase each other.
Anyway, I’m pretty familiar with the work of Jared Tarbell, complexification.net is on my list of links. And let’s not forget I refer to his work in my post of june 30th: curvature. Complexification was one of my first exposures to Processing, way over in 2004, it left me in awe.
Ironically, I remember thinking when I put up the piece that the color palette is very similar to ‘Substrate’ and other works of his.
Now that you pointed this out, I look at his code. The actual concept is different, and beyond the first glance, so is the result.
All I have are a thousand steering particles in a chain each trying to reach the next one. This causes an initial tangled mess to smoothen out. the interactions in Jared’s piece are more complex, more physical and essentially far more interesting. Check out his code, it’s an education!
July 2nd, 2008 at 13:26
Well, I think that inviting people to check out Tarbell’s work is the best thing to do.
I won’t argue any further.