Blog name changed, who cares :-)

For over a year the name of the blog wasn't representing the blog anymore. Finally came to a more appropriate name. Pattern Recognition is the most, or one of the most, important functions in machine learning achieved by (interactive) genetic algorithms (which are the ones used to create my images); and pattern recognition is the psychological process that I follow when recognizing a set of stimuli produced by one of this artworks (phenotypes) while finding a name for it and a matching piece of literature. In short: is the process that represents most of the machine and human work showing up in this blog, so it is very appropriate and geeky; and in shorter and in the more appropriate words of the Cheshire Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad." (- "How do you know I am mad?" - "You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.").
So artificial intelligence and human intelligence are strongly cooperating to bore the visitors as much as possible. :-D See we are all mad here?

Gone are the days when I wanted to add something to a neofauvist theory. I still believe fauvism can be taken further, though.

C.

May flower

Autumn arrived late, and since today seems to be a hard winter in advance...

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

Emily Dickinson, 53.

Experimental, 3D L-Systems

Just trying to go a step further again, I slowly started to create a third branch of my software to create 3D L-Systems now. The first phase was (and still is) 2D Evolutionary Art through genetic algorithms, the second was (and still is) 3D Evolutionary Art through the 3D application of genetic algorithms.
So this are my first results on 3D L-Systems, one quite new path for digital art, as 3D art through genetic algorithms also is, to be fair.
The biggest problem I have for the results on 3D L-Systems is the same that I have for genetic algorithms: the position of the camera, the view tends to get blocked by the growing 3D objects. The easiest is the scenery (because is a simple scenery too), my friends use to ask me about how the scenery interacts with the generated objects and it is very simple: Pov-Ray takes care of it once the camera position and the lights position is given, and my scenery only consists of one or two planes only, so it is mostly a mirage.

This was my seventh attempt of an image, and I show this one instead of the first because in this one I was able to get transparency and specular reflection in the textures. This was the first version of this attempt, and it's a set of growing objects (simple cubes) through 3D L-Systems, note the arborescent structure:



Green cubes again! ;-)
To this first version I added a fractal background by the same module I'm using since my second branch of the software, this only takes a minute to input the parameters and render, this is the second version, same objects, now with a simple scenery:




I'm using Pov-Ray 64-bits as my rendering engine, and its text source files of every scene use to hit the stunning size of 30 MB.
I've not seen yet great developments on genetic algorithms for 3D visual arts or 3D L-Systems for the same purpose, but eventually, as the field evolves, I'll get ideas from some other people so I can go faster with this project too.
This third branch of my software is in pre-alpha stage, and very rustic; the 3D Evoart branch is alpha, and the old 2D Evoart original is Beta and almost abandoned... My obvious problem is finding the time to continue the development and keeping a job, and some remains of having-a-life yet.
Eventually will show something more on this, although I know how boring this is, even though I find interesting the future possibilities of this grammar and tech (nology - nique).

3D (GA's) Alien snail

These are salt resistant.

oh snail,
climb mount fuji,
but slowly, slowly

Kobayashi Issa.

3D (GA's) green cubes

If you were looking for green cubes, you came to the right place; if you were not, I'm sorry and understand you, it happens to me all the time, to look for something and to find something different. So this is why I posted green cubes, if you find them you are satisfied, if you were not looking for or don't care about them, you find a sympathetic ear. I posted green cubes because it's always a win-win situation. ;-) ...and because I didn't have anything better. The poem is great though, it's nice to see how Slessor relates materials and hard shapes with fixed ideas and fluid images with a light flow of thought.

Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,
Death's candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,
Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.
Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets,
Or grammarians freeze it into spar,
Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal
Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out
In alabaster, with horny cartilage
And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy
Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture,
Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers;
But the quarries are of more use than this,—
Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice,
Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church,
Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control...
Frail tinkling rush
Water-hair streaming
Prickles and glitters
Cloudy with bristles
River of thought
Swimming the pebbles—
Undo, loosen your bubbles

Kenneth Slessor, "Fixed ideas"

Abstract Nº74

[...]
And the same night there fell a shower of rain,
For which their mouths gaped, like the cracks of earth
When dried to summer dust; till taught by pain
Men really know not what good water 's worth;
[...]

Lord Byron, "Don Juan", Canto the Second.

Abstract Nº73

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Lao Tsu, "Tao Te Ching".

Sun of May

 
On May the 25th, the May Revolution Day, during a non-violent week of revolution in 1810, Argentina decided to be ruled by itself. The Sun of May is a national reference to the May Revolution here, and it is on our flag. The flag colours are sky blue and white.

High in the sky, a warrior eagle
audacious it rises in its triumphal flight
A blue wing of the color of the sky
A blue wing of the color of the sea

Thus in the high radiant aurora.
The tip of an arrow the golden face imitates.
And the purple neck leaves a wake.
The wing is cloth, the eagle is flag.

It is the flag of my homeland,
born from the sun that God gave me.
It is the flag of my homeland,
born from the sun that God gave me.

H.C. Quesada & L. Illica, "Sunrise".

Alta en el cielo, un águila guerrera
audaz se eleva en vuelo triunfal;
azul un ala del color del cielo,
azul un ala del color del mar.

Así en la alta aurora irradial,
punta de flecha el áureo rostro imita,
y forma estela al purpurado cuello.

El ala es paño, el águila es bandera.
Es la bandera de la patria mía,
del sol nacida, que me ha dado Dios;
es la bandera de la patria mía,
del sol nacida, que me ha dado Dios.

H.C. Quesada & L. Illica, "Aurora".

3D (GA's) Nonsensical sculpture

It is nonsense
says reason
It is what it is
says love

It is calamity
says calculation
It is nothing but pain
says fear
It is hopeless
says insight
It is what it is
says love

It is ludicrous
says pride
It is foolish
says caution
It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love

Eric Fried, "What it is".

3D (GA's) Aquatic plant II

The alchemists detect in the sexual activity of man a correspondence with the world's creation, with the growth of plants, and with mineral formations. When they see the union of rain and earth, they see it in an erotic sense, as copulation. And this extends to all natural realms of matter. For they can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire.

James Morrison, "Notes on vision".

3D (GA's) Seashell

The sea, my mother, is singing to me,
She is singing the old refrain,
Of passion, of love, and of mystery,
And her world-old song of pain;
Of the mirk midnight and the dazzling day,
That trail their robes o'er the wet sea-way.

The sea, my mother, is singing to me
With the white foam caught in her hair,
With the seaweed swinging its long arms free,
To grapple the blown sea air:
The sea, my mother, with billowy swell,
Is telling her tale to the wave-washed shell.

The sea, my mother, is singing to me,
With the starry gleam in her wave,
A dirge of the dead, of the sad, sad sea,
A requiem song of the brave;
Tenderly, sadly, the surges tell
Their tale of death to the wave-washed shell.

The sea, my mother, confides to me,
As she turns to the soft, round moon,
The secrets that lie where the spirits be,
That hide from the garish noon:
The sea, my mother, who loves me well,
Is telling their woe to the wave-washed shell.

O mother o' mine, with the foam-flecked hair,
O mother, I love and know
The heart that is sad and the soul that is bare
To your daughter of ebb and flow;
And I hold your whispers of Heaven and Hell
In the loving heart of a wave-washed shell.

David MacDonald Ross, "The Sea to the Shell".

3D (GA's) Mushrooms and flower

A little ink more or less!
I surely can't matter?
Even the sky and the opulent sea,
The plains and the hills, aloof,
Hear the uproar of all these books.
But it is only a little ink more or less.

What?
You define me God with these trinkets?
Can my misery meal on an ordered walking
Of surpliced numskulls?
And a fanfare of lights?
Or even upon the measured pulpitings
Of the familiar false and true?
Is this God?
Where, then, is hell?
Show me some bastard mushroom
Sprung from a pollution of blood.
It is better.

Where is God?

Stephen Maria Crane, "A little ink more or less!".

3D (GA's) Leviathan's tail

[...]
And when at last the prince of darkness, couch'd
In symbol of the great leviathan,
The dragon of the river floods of Nile,
Harden'd the heart of Pharaoh, scourged by all
Heaven's plagues, until it grew like adamant,
And led him to assay the ocean depths
And satisfy his lust on Israel there,
Vainly God moving in the pillar cloud
Smote with His glittering sword that monster's head,
And with the wreck of chariots and of arms
And horsemen overta'en in baleful rout
Cumber'd the waters and confused the shores.
All was in vain. Each desperate repulse
But seem'd to kindle fiercer subtler hate
In those infatuate spirits, till I have seen
The cheek of Michael alter with distress,
And all the hosts of heaven astonied stand,
As couriers in successive hours announced
Hell's endless crafts, each deadlier than the last.
[...]

Edward Henry Bickersteth, "Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever". (Book VI: The Empire of Darkness).

3D (GA's) Aquatic plant

I'm constantly on the two-fold disaster in Burma, trying to not post on that though, to avoid repetition. It's just that reminds me so closely to the dictatorship times in Argentina that I just can't take it off my mind. Many people "torn from their root like a water-plant in autumn"...

My heritage lost through disorder and famine,
My brothers and sisters flung eastward and westward,
My fields and gardens wrecked by the war,
My own flesh and blood become scum of the street,
I moan to my shadow like a lone-wandering wildgoose,
I am torn from my root like a water-plant in autumn:
I gaze at the moon, and my tears run down
For hearts, in five places, all sick with one wish.

Bai JuYi, "To my brothers and sisters adrift in troubled times".

3D (GA's) Midgarthormr

Sea without end. Fish without
end. Green enclosing cosmogonic serpent–
green serpent and green sea–
the earth encircled. The serpent’s mouth
bites its tail, though it comes from afar,
from the nether confine. The stern
ring pressing us is a tempest’s splendour,
reflections of reflections, shadow and murmur.
It is also the amphisbaena. Its many eyes gaze
eternally one upon another, in an absence
of horror. Each head grossly scents
the irons of war and its spoils.
It was dreamed in Iceland. The gaping seas
have witness it and trembled.
It will return with the cursed
ship armed with dead men’s nails.
Its inconceivable shadow will loom
high above the pale world on the day
of high wolves and splendid agony
of a twilight without name.
Its imaginary image darkens the air.
Toward dawn I saw it all in nightmare.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Midgarthormr".

Sculpture in the digital desert

[...]
“Stay a moment, Brother; plunder us of our passion;
Our day is short, but our beauty is eternal.”
Never have I found a place, or a season, without beauty.
Neither the sea, where the white stallions champ their bits and rear against their bridles,
Nor the Desert, bride of the Sun, which sits scornful, apart,
Like an unwooed princess, careless, indifferent.
She spreads her garments, wonderful beyond estimation,
And embroiders continually her mantle.
She is a queen, seated on a throne of gold
In the Hall of Silence.
She insists upon humility.
She insists upon meditation.
She insists that the soul be free.
[...]

Charles Erskine Scott Wood, "The poet in the desert".

Long stamens II

You are like a pale purple flower
In the blue spring dusk

You are like a yellow star
Budding and blowing
In an apricot sky
You are like the beauty
Of a voice
Remembered after death

You are like thin, white petals
Falling
And
Floating
Down
Upon the white stilled hushing
Of my soul.

Angelina Weld Grimke, "Evanescence"

At sixes and elevens

I wanted to modify the parameters of the image I was working on, and (without knowing why) used values of 6 and 11 all around. This is the abstract, however, I named it; mostly because it took a lot of time to render.  ;-)  Image and poem were thought for people who like math, then.  The poem was written by Binyon, a poet that I like very much.

Trefoil and Quatrefoil!
What shaped those destinied small silent leaves
Or numbered them under the soil?
I lift my dazzled sight
From grass to sky,
From humming and hot perfume
To scorching, quivering light,
Empty blue! — Why,
As I bury my face afresh
In a sunshot vivid gloom —
Minute infinity's mesh,
Where spearing side by side
Smooth stalk and furred uplift
Their luminous green secrets from the grass,
Tower to a bud and delicately divide —
Do I think of the things unthought
Before man was?

Bodiless Numbers!
When there was none to explore
Your winding labyrinths occult,
None to delve your ore
Of strange virtue, or do
Your magical business, you
Were there, never old nor new,
Veined in the world and alive: —
Before the Planets, Seven;
Before these fingers, Five!

You that are globed and single,
Crystal virgins, and you that part,
Melt, and again mingle!
We have hoisted sail in the night
On the oceans that you chart:
Dark winds carry us onward, on;
But you are there before us, silent Answers,
Beyond the bounds of the sun.
You body yourselves in the stars, inscrutable dancers,
Native where we are none.

O inhuman Numbers!
All things change and glide,
Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay,
But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide,
And obey but them who obey.
All things else are dyed
In the colours of man's desire:
But you no bribe nor prayer
Avails to soften or sway.
Nothing of me you share,
Yet I cannot think you away.
And if I seek to escape you, still you are there
Stronger than caging pillars of iron
Not to be passed, in an air
Where human wish and word
Fall like a frozen bird.

Music asleep
In pulses of sound, in the waves!
Hidden runes rubbed bright!
Dizzy ladders of thought in the night!
Are you masters or slaves —
Subtlest of man's slaves, —
Shadowy Numbers?

In a vision I saw
Old vulture Time, feeding
On the flesh of the world; I saw
The home of our use undated —
Seasons of fruiting and seeding
Withered, and hunger and thirst
Dead, with all they fed on:
Till at last, when Time was sated,
Only you persisted,
Dædal Numbers, sole and same,
Invisible skeleton frame
Of the peopled earth we tread on —
Last, as first.

Because naught can avail
To wound or to tarnish you;
Because you are neither sold nor bought,
Because you have not the power to fail
But live beyond our furthest thought,
Strange Numbers, of infinite clue,
Beyond fear, beyond ruth,
You strengthen also me
To be in my own truth.

Robert Laurence Binyon, "Numbers".

Venus Foam

Again with a song by Héroes del Silencio. I just like the band and now they are playing again.

Off guard, close to my lips
harvest mouth, carnation breasts,
curves of honey, corner of voices
and knives of saliva.
I swam naked on your swell
now that the boat is sinking
and only you can save me.
And you doubt my doubts
of my rituals, of my ruins.
Between always and never
I swam naked on your swell
the foam of venus, the slender fruits
that wanted to milk
the dowser searching for water

Fiction is and will be
my own reality.

Artists of sin
I learned by heart
the geography of your
sugar and steel centre.
Venus foam,
I swam naked on your swell
immaterial perfume
shelter and beginning
the vertical howling
as an answer to your prodigies.

Fiction is and will be
my own reality.

With the unworn disguise
of diving into the ephemeral
fiction is and will be
the only reality.

Héroes del Silencio, "Venus Foam".
You can play the song here:

Abstract Nº 72

Sit in reverie, and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.

Henry Longfellow.

Five leaves

The leaves of bamboo grass
All o'er the mount with silken
Rustles sound, yet
I dream of my darling,
For I am parted from her.

Kakinomoto no Asomi Hitomaro.

Piast

Tired today of 2D and thiking about matching poems, couldn't help to try my 3D extensions again. The image was generated after a very simple set of instructions, only spheres were used at the 3D renderer.
It was born hours ago, and as it looks like sort of a water monster, I named it Piast, like the irish beast.
The creature was generated by genetic algorithms, the background is fractal-generated and both interact, as the water demonstrate.
Image is widescreen 16:9.

Of monsters the Irish had, and still believe in, the Piast (Latin bestia), a huge dragon or serpent confined to lakes by St. Patrick till the day of judgment, but still occasionally seen in their waters. In old Fenian times, namely, the days of Finn and his companion knights, the Piasts, however, roamed the country, devouring men and women and cattle in large numbers, and some of the early heroes are recorded to have been swallowed alive by them and then to have hewed their way out of their entrails.

Joseph Dunn & P.J. Lennox, "The glories of Ireland".

Sky (version 2)

Sometimes it happens like this. It ends being a simple image after all, but the vision takes months to end up as it has to be. I wanted to make a sky going from shades of white to black, as the attached poem goes, that simple.
Thought I would never end this one. And I wanted it for this poem in particular.
If you never listened to good, tragic, existential poems/lyrics of tango, then you can't know how close to that art this poem is. As Milton have seen, and Proust, and Borges, and all the high art, there's no other kind of paradise than the paradise lost... and the sky, in tango music is a symbol of our collective future.

1
On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.

2
Since that day many, many months
Have quietly floated down and past.
No doubt the plum trees were chopped down
And you ask me: what's happened to my love?
So I answer you: I can't remember.
And still, of course, I know what you mean
But I honestly can't recollect her face
I just know: there was a time I kissed it.

3
And that kiss too I would have long forgotten
Had not the cloud been present there
That I still know and always will remember
It was so white and came from on high.
Perhaps those plum trees still bloom
And that woman now may have had her seventh child
But that cloud blossomed just a few minutes
And when I looked up, it had disappeared in the wind.

Bertolt Brecht, "Remembrances of Marie A.", on Manual of Piety.

Abstract Nº71

Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Charles Dickens, "Oliver Twist" (Chapter 10).

Abstract Nº70

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Max Planck, in "The Observer" of January 25th, 1931.

3D (GA's) Monolith

On december 2007 I was experimenting with interactive genetic algorithms and evolving images in 3D, and when the program came up with this I thought to find a light resemblance with the black monolith of "2001: A space oddysey".

I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

HAL, (in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A space odyssey").

Abstract Nº69

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso.

3D (GA's) Caterpillar

This one was made completely by genetic algorithms (like always) in December 2007, when I was experimenting in 3D. Going back to 3D -and opening a blog for it- is a permanent, constant, everlasting plan.

This caterpillar on a spiritual barren land is looking for the sweet plant of your soul to feed from. Beware of the caterpillar now... but one day will become a butterfly. :-)

With this said, and because of this: Happy should-be-independence-day to my friends in Mexico and to everyone involved in freedom and individual rights.

Protect your digital rights.

Reject the defective by design.

Support a free culture to build upon.

a caterpillar,
this deep in fall—
still not a butterfly

Matsuo Basho.

Shamrock II

Through Erin's Isle
To sport awhile
As Love and Valour wander'd,
With Wit, the sprite,
Whose quiver bright
A thousand arrows squander'd;
Where'er they pass,
A triple grass
Shoots up, with dew-drops streaming,
As softly green
As emeralds seen
Through purest crystal gleaming.
Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock!
Chosen leaf
Of Bard and Chief,
Old Erin's native Shamrock!

Says Valour, "See,
They spring for me,
Those leafy gems of morning!" —
Says Love, "No, no,
For me they grow,
My fragrant path adorning."
But Wit perceives
The triple leaves,

And cries, "Oh! do not sever
A type that blends
Three godlike friends,
Love, Valour, Wit, for ever!"
Oh, the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock!
Chosen leaf, etc.

So firmly fond
May last the bond
They wove that morn together,
And ne'er may fall
One drop of gall
On Wit's celestial feather.
May Love, as twine
His flowers divine,
Of thorny falsehood weed 'em:
May Valour ne'er
His standard rear
Against the cause of Freedom!
Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal Shamrock!
Chosen leaf, etc.

Thomas Moore, “Oh, the Shamrock”.

Abstract Nº68

Talk, talk, talk; the utter and heart-breaking stupidity of words.

William Faulkner, "Mosquitoes".

Colourful planet

One more on the topic of spherical animals. The world is more interesting, and other times even more tolerable, just because I have paintings and literature to enjoy. So then, just in case I never said this: I love this book since I was a little kid. This is one of my favourite chapters.

The sphere is the most uniform of solid bodies since every point on its surface is equidistant from its center.

Because of this, and because of its ability to revolve on an axis without straying from a fixed place, Plato (Timaeus, 33) approved the judgment of the Demiurge, who gave the world a spherical shape. Plato thought the world to be a living being and in the Laws (898) stated that the planets and stars were living as well. In this way, he enriched fantastic zoology with vast spherical animals and cast aspersions on those slow witted astronomers who failed to understand that the circular course of heavenly bodies was voluntary.
In Alexandria over five hundred years later, Origen, one of the Fathers of the Church, taught that the blessed would come back to life in the form of spheres and would enter rolling into Heaven.
During the Renaissance, the idea of Heaven as an animal reappeared in Lucilio Vanini; the Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino spoke of the hair, teeth, and bones of the earth; and Giordano Bruno felt that the planets were great peaceful animals, warm-blooded, with regular habits, and endowed with reason. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler debated with the English mystic Robert Fludd which of them had first conceived the notion of the earth as a living monster, "whose whalelike breathing, changing with sleep and wakefulness, produces the ebb and flow of the sea." The anatomy, the feeding habits, the color, the memory, and the imaginative and shaping faculties of the monster were sedulously studied by Kepler.
In the nineteenth century, the German psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (a man praised by William James in his A Pluralistic Universe) rethought the preceding ideas with all the earnestness of a child. Anyone not belittling his hypothesis that the earth, our mother, is an organism superior to plants, animals, and men-may look into the pious pages of Fechner's Zend-Avesta. There we read, for example, that the earth's spherical shape is that of the human eye, the noblest organ of our body. Also, that "if the sky is really the home of angels, these angels are obviously the stars, for the sky has no other inhabitants."

Jorge Luis Borges, "The book of the imaginary beings", (Animals in the Form of Spheres).

Spherical animal

Happy international workers' day.
For some reason (unrelated to the previous) reminded Plato and his spherical animal/universe when I saw this sphere came up, so that's why the quote.

In the likeness of what animal did the Creator make the world? It would be an unworthy thing to liken it to any nature which exists as a part only; for nothing can be beautiful which is like any imperfect thing; but let us suppose the world to be the very image of that whole of which all other animals both individually and in their tribes are portions. For the original of the universe contains in itself all intelligible beings, just as this world comprehends us and all other visible creatures. For the Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and most perfect of intelligible beings, framed one visible animal comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred nature.

[...]

Now to the animal which was to comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable which comprehends within itself all other figures. Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike.

Plato, "Timaeus", (First main section).