Originally posted on Substack
“scattered star-light falls a faint birdsong on the water’s surface” - Wayfinder
The poem was the generative haiku that was generated as I played through Wayfinder. What is it you ask?
Wayfinder is a web-based generative art game that takes the player on a contemplative cause-and-effect journey through nature. Symbolizing the give-and-take relationship humans have with the natural world, players move a mystical character through forest, grasslands and tundra in search of poetic tokens dotting the landscape. When activated, they reveal words hidden in the wind, breathing new life into the nearby flora and fauna. Leaves stir and flowers spring up in the character’s footsteps. Birds and butterflies emerge. As the player continues on their journey, these uncovered words combine into verse, expressing our eternal need to capture nature’s fleeting moments in poetry.
The gameplay is soothing; the artwork and generative aspects of the game make it an experience of art in its own right. The team produced a beautiful piece of what is probably more of an exhibition of generative art in game form. As the character is gliding along; subtle sight sounds, changing environments and seasons create a journey as it collects a unique poem.
The generative aspects about it is the haiku which is unique to every gameplay. The game play itself also creates a different environment on in every iteration.
- The variation of color and orientation of flowers
- the swaying grass and its length
- the location and variety of woodland creatures
- to the location of trees and its leaves
- the time when precipitation falls
- insects flying (fireflies, butterflies)
- Sounds depending on location
All packaged up into a seemingly simple world of discovery.
At its core, the game embodies the beauties of discovery and the attention to details that make every new experience. It’s the quiet details that can have the biggest impact.
Definitely take a few minutes to play through it.
Have a great week!
Chris Ried
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📰 Happenings
Joshua Bagley: Dreams
If you were not able to attend the newest drop from Artblocks.io, here are a few of my favorites. You
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Joshua Bagley is a prolific generative artist that has been filling my instagram feed with joy for a couple of years. Plus he has a dope HP 4550 plotter that makes my Axidraw weep. LOL.
His latest work has been featured on the Artblocks platform called Dreams. Currently all of his work has been minted, but you can find his work on the secondary market OpenSea if you are interested in being able to purchase some of his work.
Joshua Bagley - Website / Twitter / Instagram
🔖 Articles and Tutorials
Wayfinder
Nature is full of poetry. As the breeze dances over fallen leaves, its earthy sighs intertwine with birdsong off in the distance. What ageless tale is the landscape whispering today? It may never be whispered again…
Artistic Coding in Blender
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David Mignot creates art in Blender by using mostly lines of code. In this video he gives us a basic breakdown of his special workflow in Blender.
If 3D work is your thing, I have found that this video probably has been the most streamlined guide to thinking about creating generative works in Blender. There is much to learn about blender and generating 3D shots, however if you aren’t wanting to try through three.js or drawing with shaders this is your chance!
Live Coding: Bending Light
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In this video we’ll look at refraction: the bending of light as it moves from one medium to another.
I came across the following channel from a discussion in a Slack channel (Thanks Piter Pasma). The Art of Code is a learning channel who specializes in writing shaders and talking through his process. The above refraction video (there is a second part, link here).
I made Skynet by hacking Ableton & Pigments - getting started w/ Generative music
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I made Skynet by hacking Ableton & Pigments - getting started w/ Generative music
It’s an interesting concept of using a top 5 DAW to generate music. It doesn’t use any Max for Live devices or Max programming but uses some of the devices that have been added in Ableton Live which bring randomness as a MIDI source to create interesting atmospheric textures.
Exploring Emergent Structures Using Cellular Automata
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The following lecture was an interesting discovery session of looking to find new rules based systems that produce interesting structures. Lior Ben-Gai is a computational artist whose mission is to find simple rule structures (such as cellular automata) and see how they work. Its very interesting so I would definitely recommend watching.
Flow Constraints
Just an interesting piece to check out!
Course
openFrameworks Tutorial Series
openFrameworks is a C++ creative coding framework that takes some of the complicated concepts of C++ and helps focus the artist to creating art vs worrying about all of the technical requirements of a low level language such as C++.
If you are a video tutorial fan, the following series (there are 60ish episodes) in which Lewis Lepton has created tutorials similar to Dan Shiffman’s series for processing.
Shoutouts
Check out sableraph on Twitch, he streams on Tuesdays and Sundays about the new things in the creative code space and curates weekly creative code news. He also has a comprehensive show notes on his site.
Raphaël de Courville - Twitter / Linktree