Recursion Recursion Recursion
Virtual Arts Installations by
FreeWee Ling
Art is Distilled Chaos Recursion is a collection of installations created under an Artist in Residence land grant by the Linden Endowment for the Arts in Second Life, July through December 2015. I thank the LEA committee and Linden Lab for this opportunity. One of the most powerful creative techniques for any artist in any medium is recursive construction. In technical terms,. recursion differs from simple repetition in that what recurs is similar to the original iteration, but may be altered in some systematic way. Thus, for example, a mirror image is not a repetition of an image, but a repetition with reversal. Or fan blades are a set of iterations rotated around a center. Perhaps the most common and obvious application of recursion is in music, where musical forms throughout history have relied on a theme and variations. Everything from 12-bar blues to a Bach fugue involves the statement of a phrase or theme, followed by a restatement, either simply repetition or perhaps shifted to another pitch, or some other variable in a coherent pattern that allows the listener to anticipate the resolution or to grasp the internal form. Even Beethoven symphonies use “sonata form� which is, in essence, an A-A-B-A form in which a theme is stated and repeated, then transforms into some variation, finally to be repeated yet again in roughly the original form. Similarly, the use of repeating forms such as ostinato, canon, fugue, passacaglia, chaconne, are all based on repetition with variation. In visual art recursion is less of a fundamental or universal technique, but is nonetheless a powerful means of filling space with patterns that appeal to visual logic. Geometric design is often recursive, as in Buddhist mandala images, or Islamic architectural elements. Architecture, especially, invites opportunities for repetition and recursion as we see horizontally in colonnades and vertically in the erection of tall buildings of many . Creating large or complex objects in SL is made easy by the ability to duplicate, rotate, and/or resize objects. And such recursion is easily automated using rezzer scripts to build algorithmically. I received numerous comments wondering at my remarkable ability to fill a sim with content if a fairly short time. While I am able to produce work fairly quickly, what made these works possible is largely the rapid deployment of recursive building techniques. FreeWee Ling December 2015
RECURSION Start Copybot Styx Fibonacci Rezzer Treasure Underbubbles Invisible Machines Radar Field Swing Mediahead Reticulation Tableau Vivant Flight Support Aperture Magic Fingers Mortal Coils Tower Fibonacci Field Ribbon Lights Butterfly Swirlish Underground Lobby Striped Waves Climbing Shadows Rollerballs Limbo The Gallery (Misc.) 1000 Sphere Fibonacci Array
Start
Tower
Ribbon Light
Fibonacci Array Mortal Coils
Butterfly
Magic Fingers
Swirlish
Aperture
Flight Support Mediahead
Swing
Reticulation
Tableau
Radar Field
Fibonacci Rezzer Treasure Copybot Styx
Invisible Machines Underbubbles
Start
Copybot
Styx
This is one of a pair of small boats (about 1 meter long) that continuously plied their way up and down the canal at the southern border. A colored fish would occasionally jump out of the boat and into the water.
Fibonacci Rezzer
Among the various recursive objects in the LEA27 sim were several that were generated from a script I developed to rez objects in a Fibonacci sequence. Mathematically, a Fibonacci number is generated from the sum of the previous pair of whole numbers (a recursive equation), starting with 1 or 0, thus: 0,1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, .... As it happens, this sequence is seen often in nature (and approximates the “golden ratio”) and so tends to have a pleasing “naturalistic” form. In practical terms, a Fibonacci angle can be stated as a value of approximately 137.5077641 degrees. Using this as a constant allows the simplistic application of recursion to create spiral forms. And by deviating from the constant and adding a variable second axis, we can generate very complex recursive forms. I created a device that does exactly that. The user has several variables to choose from, including rotational angle, object type and size, number of iterations, and spacing. I have added ambient lighting controls as they seem more subtle than actually coloring the objects. The user simply touches the variable controllers and then touches the large START button to implement. A black spherical enclosure could be optionally toggled to provide an uncluttered background.
Treasure
The treasure chest is guarded by a set of spikes that rotate to point at anyone walking towards them, thus preventing access. In fact, the treasure box itself is merely a prop containing nothing of value.
Underbubbles
The tunnel guards protect the entrance leading to an unclear destination. When the visitor approaches the far end the floor is phantom (non-physical) causing him to fall through. In the room below large orbs begin to appear. They must be pushed out of the way in order to find the exit device.
Invisible Machines Doing Important Things
This installation is inspired by the idea that much of what happens in daily life is hidden from view. We may have a general idea about things, but when we turn on a tap and water runs out, how specifically does it get there? We don’t know where the food we buy and eat comes from or how it’s processed. We don’t know what our taxes are used for. There are some 323 million people in the US, but our government routinely spends billions of tax money on weapons and roads and education and art and medical care. The average spent per person is something on the order of 30 thousand dollars. I have never paid more than a small fraction of that amount in Federal taxes, so I am presumably being hugely subsidized by corporations and other large revenue generators. (Thank you Exxon/Mobil.) Simply because of the size of government and the diversity of what it does on a daily basis, we are unaware of the vast majority of what government does every day in our name.
THE CONTAINMENT BUILDINGS: There are six numbered containment units patrolled by guards and surveillance cameras. This is all for show. There is no actual security. The access codes are freely given and the guards move to avoid confrontation. The access codes must be entered to raise the buildings and expose their contents. A fence is raised to prevent entry into the containment spaces, but this is only for the safety of visitors.
Building 1: Transformation of energy to information. This facility is used by certain agencies to monitor the conformation, deformation and reformation of information. Your experience is being mediated by technology.
Building 2: Risk analysis. Just because a thing does not exist, doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.
Building 3: Generators. By invoking the names of powerful forces, we create a conduit of energy to our favor. Some people call this “prayer�.
Generators include: • Prayer wheels. Each of the wheels spins faster as you approach it, using your energy to invoke the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum.” The words are printed 6500 times inside each of the four wheels. It is said that the effect is the same as reciting the mantra as many times as it is duplicated within the wheel.
• Votive candles that burn or stop at random intervals to call upon the intercession of saints • Deus ex machina: The Avemaria machine sends “Hail Marys” on signs that float up to the heavens
Building 4: The Neuron Spallation Source. The most complex substances in the universe are created by biological processes and, as far as we can tell so far, exist only on our planet. Here we are firing cold neurons at a target to generate new ideas.
Building 5: A simple recirculating energy pump used to filter misconceptions.
Building 6: Baraka - subtle energy taken from the source and channeled into the world through dance.
Radar Field
The Big Swing
Touching the colorful pyramid attaches to the visitor to a large sphere at the end of a 30 meter long tether, causing it to swing in large arcs. A fun ride, but a rough dismount.
Mediahead
Reticulation
Tableau Vivant
Tableau Vivant is ultimately about gesture — capturing a dramatic moment — but a moment without context or meaning, freely interpreted by the viewer. While this is a static piece, there are options for the viewer to interact with it and to become a part of it. All of the figures are scripted with the pose animations, so viewers can replace any one of them with their own bodies. Additionally, the staging can be altered by anyone in various ways using a central control panel at the front of the stage. Adjustments include: • • • • •
Lighting controls to set the color and/or ambient brightness of the lights. Lighting colors may optionally be set to change randomly at 5 second intervals. A particle shower emanating from the upper center figure can be toggled. A solid color background panel and floor can be set to appear or disappear. The background can be moved forward to optionally cover the scaffolding superstructure, giving a less complicated image.
This piece is inspired by the theatrical performance piece, “Tableau Vivant of The Delirium Constructions,” by Sarah Small. There is an amazing video available on her website at: http://www.sarahsmall.com/tableau-vivant The conception is also inspired by the choreography of Twyla Tharp. I tried to capture some of the gestural thrust and energy of her dancers, without being a literal interpretation of any particular piece. The foreground poses are based on sculptures by August Rodin.
Flight Support
Aperture
Aperture contains a number of pyramidal objects arranged in a circle. Each part rotates around its own center, but is otherwise stationary. The control panel allows a visitor to change the lighting, rotational axes, and the scale of the objects. In most cases the effect is a gradual opening and closing of the center space, much like the aperture of a camera. In practice, the rotations are fairly chaotic unless only the X axis is set to non-zero.
Magic Fingers
Mortal Coils
Mortal Coils runs on a timer to randomly change the X and Y scale of the set of hoops in consistently increasing size, while also resetting the axis angle of each hoop by similar degrees. This results in sometimes interesting and gracefully convoluted shapes.
The Tower
The Tower was part of an original concept for the LEA sim that involved using scripted terraformers to spontaneously alter the landscape on demand. The limitations of the script functions ultimately made the process not worth pursuing, but I did make a device to construct the hollow spiral mountain, which would be nearly impossible to do any other way. I had to run it a dozen or so times to draw the walls up from the ground. It is nearly 100 meters tall. I then created a lighted path to follow the spiral from ground level to a point continuing on from the top and ending at a box that could generate a seraphic angel which could be flown to the ground (or anywhere else on the sim). I made an L-shaped hallway filled with changing light patterns, entered via a heavy vault door and terminating at the base of the tower.
Ribbon Lights
Butterfly
The Butterfly was originally made as a sculpture for a garden that has hundreds of butterflies flitting about that are based on the drawings of Western Australia artist Tim Maley. I like the massive mechanical hand supporting the relatively delicate and ephemeral insect.
Swirlish
The Underground
I like to create “secret� places in my sims that are not immediately obvious. I especially like to create vast areas underground that have unobtrusive (though accessible) entryways. In this case I place a couple of ordinary wooden doors, standing alone in the middle of the gallery. When the visitor touches the door, the floor turns non-physical, causing them to drop through to a vesitbule below.
I made a Segway-style vehicle several years ago for traveling around a sim I used to own. One of the first vehicles I ever built.
Parts of the underground area are close to the reticulation circle rays from above that track visitors as they move about.
The Underground area consists of three large rooms and the arrival vestibule. The lighting here is from projecting spotlights that move around randomly.
Image Dreaming
Limbo
This room is based in part on the Limbo entrance to my Angry Gods installation from a few years ago. I am resurrecting the scene for photos to be included in a graphic novel currently in progress.
Rollerballs
This piece has been displayed a number of times before. The two larger balls with rough surfaces roll around the container continuously, occasionally caroming off each other . The change color and speed of rotation randomly. The red button allows visitors to add limited balls to make it more active. All of the balls emit trails of particle lights.
Striped Waves
These wavy fingers move slowly across the floor creating dramatic complex motions under the rotating colored stripe projected lights.
Climbing Shadows
I took a grouping from Tableau Vivant and placed it between two walls with rotating spotlights casting shadows on the walls.
The Gallery (Misc.)
1000 Sphere Fibonacci Array