Algoritmos Genéticos - 3D #132

Las voces negativas en tu cabeza también son parte de tu arte.
[ The negative voices inside your head are also part of your art. ]

Burgled again

Today I came back home to see that they broke in and took my desktop computer with my work, plus imagery for Scenawry. That blog is my favourite and was the most active lately, which means now that it'll be stopped once again; and this one will be back to be the most active. A big jump in quality (and a lot of work) is now lost forever. I don't feel like creating anything again, but I'll continue here. I'm concerned about the visual change that I was struggling to get, and getting closer since December, because the improvements are lost. Unfortunately a huge blow has been given to the push of my already depressed will.
That's all.

Move on up!

Move on up (as in the Curtis Mayfield song). Sporadic creative outbursts had temporarily moved over Scenawry and, eventually, Frogtal.

If you wanna see some movement here, must wait, or hit the links for now and see something different. Excuse that, if needed.

My abilities on digital art are limited (plus enclosed into math and heroically rejecting hand-made art), so regularly they need a refreshment of the code (if possible), of the concept (if any), or the vision. I'm on it, but also on enjoying the extreme heat and the summer, my favorite season. I can't hide the obvious: I'm putting less effort everyday, and everyday feeling more mediocre; but it's all my fault, because I dedicate less and less time to the part that gives name to this blog. I expect a slight change on February, or luck, or providence to throw a bone --the latter sounds realistic. However: plans are weak for this frog, so February is foggy too, as I'm froggy. If you were truly intelligent wouldn't trust my promises… that's something that I always frogget to mention to my girlfriends too. Sad.

C.

P.S.: Have this one for now, 3D abstract #113. And may your start of the year be grand, while I look for any possible direction.

Stolen again

The yearly custom of breaking into my house and stealing everything from me is back. This time I WON'T delay my posts a single minute due to this. I don't know why, but it's a matter of pride somehow now.
The images will keep flowing and my way of flowing through life must be improved by complications like this one.
So this post was made to be unimportant very soon, like all that was stolen. Lucky for me, no present or anything close to my heart was taken, but just stuff, and a bit of work and images.
DaFrog Schwarzenegger says I'll -Be -Back ...rrright away.
I love all my admirable and friendly visitors, no matter wether I know how to express it or not.

Holy Fractal Lord of the Amphibians!

A new blog has evolved from its larva stage to a beautiful amphibian! Frogtal, the Frog of the Fractals is born! Leave those tadpoles to the petty predators, you know better, and this bull frog is for you!
All glory to the Frogtal!



The Hypnotoad says: Visit!, Subscribe!, Swallow!.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!

Two virtual images

I should be working (yes, on the weekend... well), but the flu stopped me. Nature knows and reacts when something is too much. But now, all of the sudden, there's too much time to think for a mind with atrophy. So the balance of the too-much now is hanging to the other side, opposite to where a brain without weight is placed.
On my excess of time to think I went through the memory of the places I wanted to visit since I was a child, and they were only two. Since I was a child: New York City; since a teenager: Varanasi. In the primal and untidy attachment to the images of these two cities, received during those years, there was a base of knowledge that hasn't failed yet; there was an spiritual, yet unclear base for this attachment. The years started to slowly prove it, without any search for proving anything. The base was an idea of change that couldn't happen in any different way than visiting, and making my way through those two cities.
Right now, while going through a dark time, there are positive changes operating inside me, and they are directly linked to my very personal experience with the city of New York. My whole being is slowly revolutionized in a mild way, without blows or spectacular lights.
What was expected of New York, and what is expected of Varanasi? That was something that took decades to foresee, but I could, I could see in advance what would happen. New york was expected to be exactly what it was: an experience provided to set very well fixed milestones; milestones to measure the whole future change needed to humble the cosmic size of my ego to the cosmic size of its real importance for the community; small in the general, big in the particular. In the end, an experience to tame the ego and put it in its place in society.
What's expected of Varanasi is, for the lack of another expression, quite the opposite. It's expected to be an experience to leave milestones for the needed change of integrating the society to the inner forum of the individual that I am. Impossible to explain without a set of examples: Argentina is very well known by its sociologists as a very individualistic society, where acts of social awareness could be brilliant, but isolated and very rare. It's a matter of how this society is constructed. There are no social expressions of will, no festivals, patriotic celebrations are fake, and a uniform way to be is desired for creating a personal and social sense of peace. In India there are social festivals, celebrations of the good prevailing over evil, and a high value of the learning experience of life. Finding your path to personal knowledge about what's good for the person and the society, is desired there to create a sense of peace.
In New York the same person that kindly says hello to you today, can't recognize you tomorrow. You are this that you are, in a city that it's too big to remember one of the crowd. When you can be a stranger for someone that you know well for years, this creates the haze of a dream surrounding what's real and what's not. A friend can put a friend aside for a while, to catch another objective, there are no hard feelings there; simply how the place is constructed. It teaches very well to desist on the ego, and embrace the common ground. It's a very spiritual place. In Varanasi a guy will honk his claxon for 30 minutes, naively and without hard feelings at all, until you manage to get out of a narrow path, crowded by puppy dogs and loud crossing people; you are this that you are, and you are there all the time, every second is too raw, until you are not there anymore. And it teaches you how and where to be, and not to be; teaches also what's good, and how to persist on every breath you take. It's another very spiritual place. Both are; one to desist on the futile, the other to persist on the essential.
These two cities are obviously a personal experience, and only create this atmosphere to me; they help me to evaporate the illusion of personality and they empower the reality of what's common in us all. So they both are important catalyzers for a change that I can't manage to do by myself. A change towards an objective of inner peace, recognized nothing less than twenty five years ago.
Nature knows when something is too much, knows how to stress a fast change with a flu; or how to provoke a drastic and slow change, with a primal need to visit two cities. New York is influencing from the past, Varanasi already from the future. Two images, one from the past, another from the future. Both operating their gentle force to switch the rotation axis of my world, from the outside to the inside; to something needed, to something happy inside.

All this configures only one of several reasons why I've always known that I need no shrink: I know how to place the pieces of my own puzzle; and the time it takes, must also be considered part of the puzzle. Who else could know better.
Inner peace to have freedom without numbness, freedom without numbness to have happiness without recklessness.

Maybe even my nickname shall be part of the sense of it all one day, since ancient indians considered the frog as a symbol of radical transformation, a swimmer through tough life-transitions, needing no assurance while traveling, a being of enhanced intuition, with a strong and calm connection with the spirit world. One day.

Genetic Algorithms - 3D Abstract #103 (No background)

I repost this image, with a null background, because for the first time in a long while, I'm slightly proud of the final result with this creature.
After several intents to combine textures, colours and shapes, and after the 12 hours of the final render, what took me to pick this creature was the final sense of fragility of the very light bones under a transparent skin; it indeed looked as a fragile being to me.



When I saw this entity after the first draft, I needed to give to the image a background that wasn't a big contrast in colour or shape, but one that was organically combined; an environment created to preserve its frail nature from alteration, from temptation, from damage. And that was the image on the previous post.

2D Abstracts #101, 102, 103, 104 & 105

Almost a year ago, back in September the 6th 2008, I posted my last 2D "abstract" image, called like that even though all of them are abstracts. Soon after that, someone broke into my house, and among other things, took my computer with all the images; and my immediate decision was not to continue making the 2D anymore, and move exclusively over 3D, which I did.
Now, I'm back again on 2D abstracts for the peace I get by rolling them in a pack of 9, back and forth in a flow that allows me to think; or the peace I get by enjoying the colours and shapes; or the peace I get by simply connecting with my need of recognizing patterns, similarities, maps, signs to follow, vital signs... They are my most simple products, and they determine my most primal process of creation. They're part of it, sometimes even ending up as a background for a 3D creature; so I welcome them back, as unwelcome pariahs. :-)

...And a song, just because; "Gingerbread boy", by Blue Mitchell; play it with this widget:

Creature of the Light #21

Today was our frozen independence day in Argentina, we wore scarves, rosettes with our national colours, and drank hot cocoa in the cold while we listened to the bands playing songs in the streets; every country have different traditions --rituals, heroes, and solidarity are three nice things to make us feel as one with the community.

This is my post 600, and with this I leave for a while. Tomorrow I'm off on a deserved winter vacation to the summery side of the world, to shake this cold off of me and get in touch again with the heat, and with the hot. :-)

Read the poem; an illuminated writer, a person reaching an epiphany about the mind and the heart wrote it, so she deserves that respect. I tried my best to reach a figurative image with abstract means --remember nothing here is hand-modeled: A heart with a hole, in a warm colour (the heart) surrounded by a cold colour (the mind).
This might as well, be the end of the serie of the Creatures of the Light; I've not been able to do anything better than this one in months.

See ya! Frog out. And a frog pout:



:wave:
C.

--

Said the Lion to the Lioness-'When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.'

Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time-
'The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps...so is the heart

More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas:
But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.'

Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.'

Dame Edith Sitwell, "Heart and Mind".

Clot

[...]
I’m told one clot of blood extravasate
Ends one as certainly as Roland’s sword,—
One drop of lymph suffused proves Oliver’s mace,—
Intruding, either of the pleasant pair,
On the arachnoid tunic of my brain.
That’s Nature’s way of loosing cord!—but Art,
How of Art’s process with the engine here?
When bowl and cord alike are crushed across,
Bored between, bruised through? Why, if Fagon’s self,
The French Court’s pride, that famed practitioner,
Would pass his cold pale lightning of a knife
Pistoja-ware, adroit ’twixt joint and joint,
With just a “See how facile, gentlefolks!”—
The thing were not so bad to bear! Brute force
Cuts as he comes, breaks in, breaks on, breaks out
O’ the hard and soft of you: is that the same?
A lithe snake thrids the hedge, makes throb no leaf:
A heavy ox sets chest to brier and branch,
Bursts somehow through, and leaves one hideous hole
Behind him!
[...]

Robert Browning, "The Ring And The Book", Chapter XI.


[EDIT]: The background change suggested in the comment by Dzeni won't work properly unless big changes are done to the Specular and Refractive values of the biomorphs; the white background simply emits much more light than the previous, and there are visible differences between the refractions of both images. Both have different values of "bright", let's say, to be able to look similar in different environments.



[SECOND EDIT]: Dzeni edited the first version to her liking, it's 800x600 but good enough to appreciate the changes. Since the license for all the works here is CC 3.0 nc-sa, then I add her results; therefore, this last version should be credited to her.

3D genetic Algorithms - Abstract #92

The most complex formula I've worked with until now; even had to use macros. Promised to myself never do it again. It looks better full size.

Through blue glass beams of light will pass
through broken bits of childhood's stained glass
through the blue of a coat of arms
through eternity, sick with her secrets,
you will know her healing blue light
as a ripple of cool breeze
the freshness of early violets
being sold already on wet streets
and your stitches will be of deep blue silk
sewn with an ever darkening thread –
and only a small blue bouquet will remain –
like snowflakes melting by the second.

Judita Vaiciunaite, "Blue glass".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract #90

For six weeks I was trying to find any abstract vision that could barely match a very concrete poem like "Dust" by Rupert Brooke is, to no avail. The concept was a lightning and some glowing particles. Modelling by hand is a piece of cake, but try with formulas and tell me. I was trying until I got simply tired and just accepted something resembling a lightning and something resembling a twirl of fireflies, both to be one enough and final acceptable thing. But right then, when I decided that this image was enough to go with "Dust", I reminded a song too: On the year I was born, Fleetwood Mac released a rock version of this outstanding poem by Rupert Brook (who is one of my favourite poets), it's a quite unknown song now (called "Dust" too), so much forgotten that I was oblivious about it for over a decade, but working on this image made me remember it; most probably because of the glowing things. The image is abstract and not really evocative of anything, but it made me remember the song. The poem and the song player are down below. It is the last song of the last album of the best reputated line-up of the band. The poem is far better, though, since the lyrics only focus on the darkest part of the poem.
Strange paths walks the mind.

Looks better full size.



I decisively prefer the blue glow, but this other one is a more firefly-like... I guess.

When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath —
When we are dust, when we are dust! —

Not dead, not undesirous yet,
Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that's I
Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind,
Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
The lovers in the flowers will find
A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
So high a beauty in the air,
And such a light, and such a quiring,
And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
Or out of earth, or in the height,
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden, higher, higher. . .
But in that instant they shall learn
The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow,
Until the darkness close above;
And they will know — poor fools, they'll know! —
One moment, what it is to love.

Rupert Brooke, "Dust".

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract #86

The green frog has green worms in his green lungs; or something like that. A flu, or a cold. I shouldn't be blogging. The doc forbid that in particular: "No blog for you!". He's the blog nazi.
Fever talk.

I don't want to come, yet suddenly I'm here;
I don't want to leave, yet suddenly I'm gone.
Don't know where I've come from. or gone from, either.
In this there is, of course, True News.

Since heaven can't speak, I'll have to pass it on.
Just wait for old Master Chaos to come back to life.
If I search for myself, I'll certainly find me.

Yuan Mei, "Delirium (joking at illness)".

Purple wheel of Dharma

This is an unfinished dharma wheel, it lacks one of the wheel spokes: the acting body is there, the feeling body, the karmic, the mind, the soul, the spirit, the will, the higher self, and the sacred heart... one is missing for runnerfrog, and he's rocking his ears off to not hear the terrible sound of the incomplete wheel turning. The song is down there.



Bruce Dickinson, Darkside of Aquarius:

The first hellrider came on wings a-plenty in the dark
Hauled out his poison and they blew away his mark
The fascist from the east is coming, mothers hide your sons

The second hellrider came from flaming seas and molten sands
Half is played in Hell's commands
Hauled out his poison with his promises of promised lands
Glad, good times of lying leaders

Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time
Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time

The third hellrider came teaching brothers to kill brother man
And the fourth hellrider waits on an acid trail for an acid world
Walls of old religions' fools and superstitious men
Throw some scary tarot cards and...

Here comes the riders as the wheel of dharma's running out of time
Here comes the riders as the revolution's stepping out to light
the dark aside of Aquarius has robbed us of our souls and minds
Here comes the riders as the wheel of time is running out of time

From the starlit sky on the silver sea
a lonely silver surfer comes to push the wheel for me
a lonely silver surfer comes to push the wheel for me

Gotta move, gotta move, gotta move that wheel right round

Gotta push the wheel of dharma round

I've gotta move the wheel of torment
move that wheel around

Gotta move the wheel of time, I've round.

Nine-pointed star

The presence of the number 9 is frequent in Bahá'í symbols. The number nine represents perfection, and it is the numerical value of the word Bahá’. Its most common representation is the nine-pointed star, which encloses the fruits of the spirit. In the catholic tradition they're listed on the epistle to the galatians (5:22).
Normally, the nine-pointed star is a symbol that means that the highest instance (whichever that is in your beliefs) shares a part of its divine nature in these nine qualities right up into our souls and personalities.
Here in my image, the nine-pointed star is intendedly not emmiting shadow, but yes reflection.

Spirit Divine! Eternal! Holy Dove!
These sacred fruits are thine,—peace, joy, and love,
Even peace with heaven, and peace on earth; a joy
Earth cannot give, nor, leagued with hell, destroy.
Love! 'tis the love thy presence sheds abroad
In hearts renew'd, the love supreme of God;
Long-suffering, when assailed by wrong or scorn;
Calm gentleness, though tried and spirit-worn;
True goodness, flowing from its source Divine;
And faith, that whispers, Saviour, Thou art mine!
Mild tranquil meekness, with her lowly grace;
And temperance, ruling measure, mood, and place,
In words, in deeds, in meats, in drinks, in all,
In every phase of life her warning call
Observ'd, obey'd; 'gainst such no law is found,
With heaven-born graces richly robed and crown'd.
Spirit of God! o'er the dark waters move,
That whelm our souls, where light, nor life, nor love,
Stir the dull chaos: come with life and power,
Creating light, and beauty, fruit, and flower!

Janet Hamilton, "The Fruits of the Spirit".

A new bloggo by the froggo is born

One less-kind way to bore people is out there, oh my, a new blog is born!: I have D-NURBS 4 this (geeky wordplay), it's all about stereolithography, or it will be, and it comes from your less favourite blogger but favourite frog.
Well, it wasn't born but it's open now, like the circus. :-)

Pay a visit, if you're not afraid of frogs, and listen to the jazz gadget while I bore you. Or better: send your enemies to visit! But beware of the terribly boring Hyperolius Hypernurbius frog, it can kill with only one boring session. :-)

C.

Bloggiversary / Abstract Nº82

Today the blog is two years old. They've been only two years of mostly enjoyed times of blogging, and some few ones not enjoyed. A lot of study and work had happened lately, and during this time off I've seen how I miss coming back to post something simple. I'm going through inner changes regarding my blogs, in fact, most of that study that I named is happening due to my impulse of improving the quality of the material posted. No time during the day seems to be time enough for anything. During the course of this two years, the blog has been tied to the course of my personal concerns and changes, even though it doesn't shows that up.
I don't like to speak about me here, whenever I do, I feel that I'm writing something boring.
I like this abstract, it's colourful and represents my joy of posting here, and other general joys.

What man may learn, what man may do,
Of right or wrong of false or true,
While, skipper-like, his course he steers
Through nine and twenty mingled years,
Half misconceived and half forgot,
So much I know and practise not.

Old are the words of wisdom, old
The counsels of the wise and bold:
To close the ears, to check the tongue,
To keep the pining spirit young;
To act the right, to say the true,
And to be kind whate'er you do.

Thus we across the modern stage
Follow the wise of every age;
And, as oaks grow and rivers run
Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
So the eternal march of man
Goes forth on an eternal plan.

Robert Louis Stevenson, poem named after the first line.

3D Genetic Algorithms - Abstract Nº81

I've been a bit unfair with this blog only because my standards raise in a normal way, always wanting to show something visually different. It is also commonly hard to find a way to show something different within enclosed margins, and the margins of this blog are specifically determined: only genetic algorithms, only without using image filters. It was very easy for me to ask genetic algorithms to give me more, but the big question was "How more than this, and how to achieve it fast?".
Shamefully, I also considered closing the blog only because it couldn't take me farther. So this time off has been a good lesson about being human and having limitations, and about honoring a blog for what it's made to show, and for the good that has given me.
Also, I've been told (and showed) that the images look dim, to my surprise. The configuration of my colour profile must be radically different than in other computer monitors.
So then everything changed for everything to stay the same.
By the way, people are so kind to me, so kind.
Another abstract, softer, cleaner. I'll continue where I left off. This blog offers This (r) :-)



All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

S. T. Coleridge, "Work without hope".

The flux, the reflux, and the gates on the shore

You work on digital art. You work on it, or you take it as a hobby. No matter how you do it, at some point, you reach your peak, and you think you're done: your creative peak has been reached, nothing new can be done. So the creative flux turns into a reflux of technical work. You redo your own program, facing sleepless nights of hideous math and logic. Write, compile, test, debug; write, compile, test, debug. Then, you come back renewed, and with enough luck, you re-crafted your digital tool in such a way that you can build different things, you create new stuff, and they could be even better in a way; so you are happy about your effort again... for a while.

With time, with enough repetition, you notice that the flux and reflux of this sea would inevitably overflow the container, and eventually erase the continent. The waves (your efforts) take away (mostly time of) things that belong to your life. And all this only to overcome a creative block belonging to your hobby (in the worst case), or to your digital artistic work (in the best one). Those are the gates of obsession. The three options are: walk through them, walk away from them, or knock them down. How do I know? I knew about writing; in spanish. I knew well about it. But I didn't know how to control myself when facing a frontier. In the words of my mother, when I was a teenager: "You have no control of yourself". Without knowing, I crossed the gates of obsession and I ruined the pleasure of writing. And I had to knock the gates down, burn all my papers, and don't write creatively ever again.

You learn through your life. You really learn, or at least you find the facts that fit you best. ...I won't stain and ruin the pleasure of an activity that was born as a haven, not ever again.

It came the time of the reflux, of programming and recoding --write, compile, test, debug (even when you suck at it) and at the same time, you saw that the waves were becoming too wild.
I don't wanna irresponsibly surf through the flooded gates of obsession again, or I'll lose the peaceful pleasure of coming back here. So: I'm walking away from the gates, keeping the pleasure safe. Will come back to work on images and match poems later, when the sea is calm again.

C.

Kaleisurescope

The other day I went back to the 2D branch, not knowing why. Now I know: I was missing the colours. Was a short free time well spent, a kaleidoscope view of my leisure.

The color gladdens all your heart;
You call it Heaven, dear, but I -
Now Hope and I are far apart -
Call it the sky.

I know that Nature's tears have wet
The world with sympathy; but you,
Who know not any sorrow yet,
Call it the dew.

Althea Gyles, "Sympathy".