Vortex 2018

This past weekend, Vortex 2018 happened. I took part in two compos: graphics and wild.
The graphics entry is called Mandala Offering, because it is based on that buddhist tradition, even though it does not strictly adhere to the traditional form. The idea is to offer your world, the universe, and especially things you are attached to. So I put in a pizza, as I am still somewhat attached to food. I can go without, but the occasional craving is there. However, I decided to remove it from the final image. Here you can see the picture with the pizza:

Mandala Offering (Pizza included)

There are spiritual figures and a background of vast space (made in Apophysis). This space image is a fractal flame, and it represents space both inner and outer (mental abstractions and conciousness, as well as the outer space of form). There's also a connection to the technique of multiplying the mandala when offering, for example by imagining each atom, or maybe, in this case, pixel, of it as a copy of the whole mandala, and so on. The border represents the four-fold division of space into the cardinal directions.
In the middle is a Dharmachakra ☸, with eight spokes representing the noble eight-fold path. The hub of that is what I call a tricycle (its actual name is Gankyil). This stands for the three poisons, greed, aversion, and delusion, which I offer to be exchanged for their counterparts, generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom. Eg. in my delusion/ignorance, I am greedy for spiritual truths and teachings, and I would like to exchange this condition for the wisdom of true penetration and understanding of the teaching of the Lotus Sutra of all laws as void and abstract. At the same time, I would like to relinquish my attachment even to this thought of attainments, to a development of wisdom. I recognize that I have a desire to understand the spiritual truths spoken by the Buddha, but the Diamond Sutra quite clearly says that "If someone says the Buddha has spoken spiritual truths, he slanders the Buddha due to his inability to understand what the Buddha teaches". I also have a desire to attain Nirvana, even though the Heart Sutra says there is "no attainment, with nothing to attain". However, I see these desires as empty, so they don't cause me much suffering. Still, I am attached to the Buddha as a teacher, and deluded in thinking that he has taught something, that there is wisdom to develop, so I also give him up.
I think of the tricycle as standing for other three-fold divisions as well, such as past, present and future. I made this tricycle image in Processing. The Dharmachakra ☸ is made in Inkscape, and the final image composed in Gimp. Here is the final compo version, without the pizza:

Mandala Offering

Which do you like better? In the compo, my piece was voted #3/3.
Prints are available on RedBubble.
The other entry was to the wild compo: a music video continuing the "anagram series" started by v-ten: dim car hell, v-three: call mind. It placed on a divided first place out of 11 entries.
The music track is Valmet Children's Aegon.
 
 I used an Akai APC40 borrowed from a friend with Resolume. I used an EZCap284-based recorder to record the live output from Resolume (the record function of Resolume is not enough to fulfill this purpose).