Gorilla Recap 14

Hey everyone 👋 and hello to all new subscribers that joined since last week! Thanks for signing up and joining along for the ride! This is the weekly Gorilla Recap, a newsletter in which I go over everything that I found noteworthy from the past week. Hope you have a good stay!

Just to kick things off, and since I've already covered the bird site events a number of times, I feel like it's my duty to report on it again... let's have a look at it, shall we?

Very soon, Twitter will be no more. I'm not certain what it will be called, but the antepenultimate letter of the alphabet just doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely as the familiar 'Twitter'. I feel that I'm witnessing the plot-line for a dystopian future:

Twitter is being rebranded as X

The bird site may lose its logo on Monday.

The Verge

Out of all the previous changes to the bird-site this seems like the worst one yet... I'm not entirely certain if I will continue using Twitter if this continues. I genuinely enjoy the interface, especially with how relatively easy it is to post media on the platform. I like it because things are familiar.

If there's going to be continuous drastic and erratic changes to the platform I'll probably stop posting on there as much, even though it is an integral part of the blog. A big chunk of traffic on the blog comes from the links that I tweet out, and has been the primary channel of communication for a long time now. Well, only thing that can be done at this point is to wait and see how things will go down.

Genart Updates

The Human Shader Project

Why learn Shader programming if you can become the Shader? That was the idea behind Inigo Quilez's Human Shader project, where the pixel values of the canvas are computed by means of a distributed human effort.

Every person that chooses to participate, claims a pixel and then needs to compute the RGB values of that pixel using a worksheet - essentially simulating what the shader would have done for that pixel. Yours truly has claimed the pixel with coordinates (30, 31) - initially making a wrong calculations, leading to a wrong RGB color... correcting it later however. Inigo decided to keep the other errors in however, saying that he found them 'cute'. Keep your eyes peeled for his coming youtube video on the experiment.

N=12 group show on Feral File

12 generative artists join forces under the guidance and curation of Aaron Penne - the group exhibition N=12 places an emphasis on the "wonderfully silent dialogue" that happens behind the scenes of each piece.

You can learn more about the individual pieces and read Aaron's statement on the exhibition page.

Re—tain - New Genart Platform on Tezos

Coming to you from the makers of Editart.xyz and diyframe.xyz, Piero and Andre Fuchs joined forces with Bruce (aka Studio Yorktown) to bring you a new generative art platform on Tezos. The main page is already up and accepting submissions for early access - both for artists, and collectors!

Can't wait to see what the three of them have cooked up! Go give them a follow on Twitter for their official announcements!

Interesting Reads

Demystifying Generative Art

My favorite read of the week is by far this analysis by Peter Bauman - instead of trying of making an analysis of the factors that make generative art 'interesting' or 'good', instead we lay the foundations for a framework of analysis that allows us to make such an informed analysis.

For instance, the age old question re-emerges: What is more important, the system operating in the background? Or the final output that is ultimately presented to the public? Or are they equally important? Or is it neither, and it's the concept that's the most important aspect of an artwork? The article discusses all of these angles of approach:

Demystifying Generative Art

Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) develops a framework for appreciating and analyzing generative art through an investigation of the movement’s locus of artistic intent.

Le Random — A Digital Generative Art Institutiontwo articles

Interview with Piter Pasma

If you've been following this newsletter, or are active in the generative art scene in any way, then Piter Pasma probably doesn't need an introduction. Also having played an important part in the N=12 exhibition, and having made ripples in the generative art world with his Universal Ray Hatcher, an interview with Right Click Save is well deserved. The interview goes dives deeper into Piter's beginnings from the demoscene to the early genart days on the Tezos blockchain and hicetnunc:

The Interview | Piter Pasma

As a new group exhibition of the Generative Artists Club marks the start of Feral File 2.0, one of its stars speaks with Alex Estorick

Piter PasmaAlex Estorick

The Story Behind the Source

Camille Roux and Matthieu Segret, both prolific generative artists, released their new project The Source - a beautiful piece of generative art that takes a stab at watercolor textures and the creation of colorful patterns. The write-up showcases some behind-the-scenes processes that lead to the creation of the artwork:

The story behind The Source

The year-long journey: from project kickoff to gm.studio drop

Immutable CollectiveCamille Roux

GUMBO

Mathias Isaksen is back with another banger project that's been in the works for quite a while: GUMBO. He details the past 6 months of development in this Twitter thread, sharing WIP images for every step of the progress:

The story behind Mark Knol and the SMOLSKULLs

Not a new article, but I recently saw it floating around on Twitter again and since I haven't shared it on here yet, I thought that I might as well. Another very inspirational and insightful peek into the mind of an important persona in the generative art scene - an interview with Mark Knol and the story behind the SMOLSKULLs, one of the earliest hits on FxHash:

fxhash - The story behind Mark Knol and the SMOLSKULLs

Today I’d like to share an exciting conversation with Mark Knol. He is one of the most popular artists in the generative art Tezos community, and his Smolskulls can be seen all around this blockchain these days. He has published generative art for a while across multiple platforms - hit et nunc, fxh…

fx logo

Gorilla Articles

Spring Physics, Particles and Meshes

Fourth installment in the physics system series that we started a while ago, this time we have a look at springs and how they can be simulated with code. Spoilers: we're going to be using Hooke's Law. Combining springs and particles we also now have a useful framework for creating dynamic and bouncy meshes:

Spring Physics, Particles and Meshes

Springs are an integral concept to physics, fundamental components used in many applications, coming to life with Hooke’s Law from the 17th century. In this post we have a look at how to code and simulate such springs and extend a previous particle system with them.

Gorilla SunAhmad Moussa

I got some comments already on some further improvements, and directions into which I can take it next. For instance, we could try adapting this to 3D, as well as taking a dive into Verlet Integration, which is an alternative approach to coding a particle system.

Gorilla Explorer

I worked some more on my Portfolio / Project Explorer. Re-implementing it from the ground up with Vue.js. There's still things that I think I can do better, and probably need some shuffling around, but I'm quite happy with the state that it's in right.

Also makes me realize that this is the first time that I'll publish an interactive app to the interwebs, hoping for some feedback on it when it goes live:

I also have plans to repurpose it for other things, like a learning tool for instance.

Gorilla Sketches - A Glimpse into the Core

This week I actually found some time to explore some new ideas, and as thing go, ultimately leading to something completely different. You already got a glimpse of it in the header image. I present A Glimpse into the Core!

It's still a work in progress but I feel like I'm honing on something interesting. This one isn't very technical, but I just wanted to make something fun that looks cool. I went through many ideas in quick succession, you can see some more variations in my recent Twitter posts:

Music for Coding

This week I'm including one of my personal favorite bands: Snarky Puppy! At this point, I don't know how many times I've watched/listened to this rendition of their song Lingus - but it still hits all the same every time.

I got the chance to see them live in 2018, Cory Henry wasn't with them at the time, but I got to see him a couple months later doing a solo show. But anyway, listen to this astounding piece of music, it will give you good vibes guaranteed:

And that's it from me this week again, hope this caught you up with all genart news of the past week! If you enjoyed it, consider sharing it with followers, friends and family on your socials, that share interest in this nerdy stuff. Otherwise, consider signing up to get notified whenever there's new content on the blog. Cheers and happy sketching ~ Gorilla Sun 🌸