Jumalan 2019

This past weekend, Jumalan 2019 was held. It is mostly a LAN, but there are demoscene competitions also.

I entered in the Graphics compo with this work: titled, perhaps fittingly ("Jumalan" means "of God"), "Divine Transmission". It's about the foundations of mathematics, mathematical intuition, and the sense of beauty associated therewith. I consider geometry to be particularly pure and "real", in the sense that geometric concepts such as a circle can be found to correspond with external objects that are typically considered "real", in their attributes as well as their behavior. I also believe mathematics to be universal, and to generally be discovered rather than invented. So, delving into math can feel like tapping into something profound - even divine. In the field of so-called "Sacred Geometry", an aesthetic pleasure is readily found, but its source is not apparent or easily understood. 

The rays are once again made in Apophysis. The background flower of life lattice is made in Processing. The final image is composited with Gimp. The image placed 4th out of 4 in the compo.
I also took part in the Fast GFX compo with this piece, titled "psychedelic screech". The theme for this competition was "the most annoying sound in the world". There was one hour to create a production that portrays this theme. I used Processing and Gimp for my image and the Ecosia image search to find the Clef image. It placed on a split 8th place out of 16.

The final production was a music video for a track by my friend shroomi - monkey do. I used my newly-acquired Korg Nanokontrol 2 with Resolume and vvvv visuals. All of my patches were music reactive, but it turns out there is a small issue with the sound driver: when HDMI output is selected, there is no output from the stereo mix. Stereo mix works fine when using speaker output. So, I replaced some of the audio reactivity with just random values. I also used the AceFractal and AceCellular effects from the AceFX FFGL plugin pack. The result was once again recorded with my EZCap284-based recorder. The whole thing was routed through Ugreen HDMI cables, with which I've been very satisfied.
I did a few runs through the song (the audio did not get recorded the first time, as I had not switched to the HDMI output for sound), and mixed these together into the final result you see here. The video clips are from Shrooms.

In Buddhism, there is the concept of a "monkey mind". It is the mind that is constantly scattering its attention here and there, running after this and that. It can be tamed through meditation and noticed through mindfulness, but this song, and the accompanying video, are all about "monkey see, monkey do".
It takes true imagination and creativity to do something you have never seen done before, and very few monkey minds are capable of this. For them, creativity is rare at best; they live according to what they have seen and experienced, ingrained habits and behavior patterns that propagate through the monkey community. The video is also about the contrapunct to that: original thought and behavior, not treading the beaten path. It placed 3rd out of 4.