Skrolli Party 2024

This Saturday, I took part in Skrolli Party 2024. I participated in the Wild compo with this graphics piece:

Galactic Liberation

I used a shot from the Milky Way Galaxy set by Jabi Sanz as the background, and had DALL-E3 generate the halo. The buddha is a photo I took. The editing and compositing is done in Gimp.

It placed #5/5. Prints on Redbubble.

I tell you, friend, that it is not possible by traveling to know or see or reach a far end of the cosmos where one does not take birth, age, die, pass away, or reappear. But at the same time, I tell you that there is no making an end of suffering & stress without reaching the end of the cosmos. Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the cosmos, the origination of the cosmos, the cessation of the cosmos, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the cosmos.

                     - The Buddha in AN 4.45 Rohitassa Sutta

In the Diamond Sutra (Red Pine translation), we find: 

What do you think, Subhuti, is the space to the east easy to measure?”

Subhuti replied, “No, it is not, Bhagavan.”

The Buddha said, “Likewise, is the space to the south, to the west, to the north, in between, above, below, or in any of the ten directions easy to measure?”

Subhuti replied, “No, it is not, Bhagavan.”

Space can be thought of as limitless (as in "the dimension of infinite space", one of the meditative states spoken of by the Buddha), because its nature is non-obstruction. Therefore, it does not obstruct any added yardsticks, no matter how far we measure.

 The end of the cosmos is to be found within, in Nibbana:

There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress.

                     - Ud 8.1 Nibbāna Sutta

I also made this animation, partly at the party (and partly in a parking garage while waiting for the museum I visited before the party to open!):

It was made with Processing, and converted for the Web with processing-p5-convert.

Three-fold wheels

Some time ago, I made this SVG representation of a Gankyil in Processing:

Now, I made another three-fold wheel, the World Triad:

As the Gankyil is "the Wheel of Joy", maybe this is the flip side, that is, the three poisons perpetuating? After all, it's "the World Triad", and isn't that the way of the world?

Anyway, I just wanted to write about this to remark that currently, the task of drawing the World Triad is beyond state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (Bing Copilot): it was not able to give me the radii or midpoints of the smaller circles. So, I had to do like was suggested in a Github Issue where an AI had "fixed" an issue in the wrong way: use a different kind of AI: Actual Intelligence! So, I grabbed my grid paper and after some basic trigonometry whirl-abouts, I had these figures, which I am providing here, but which the adept should really work out themselves:

float r = R * 1/(1+1/(sqrt(3)/2)); //r is smaller circle's radius, R is larger's
float l = (2/sqrt(3) - 1)*r //from center of larger along radius to circumference of smaller




Edit: I added another, "long-tailed" Gankyil:

 

I was able to draw it largely thanks to this tutorial by Zak Korvin: 

This is what the "guide pattern" looks like, so you can see it's a bit more involved:

Edit 2: Here's a study on another three-fold wheel pattern I've long been interested in: "the Musashi Family Crest". It's just a free-hand approximation; there is no deep geometric understanding, here.

Instanssi/Revision 2022

This weekend, I took part in a Revision 2022 satellite party, hosted by the Instanssi organizers. I participated in the "Modern Graphics" competition with this work:

Samatha

This work is titled Samatha, meaning a mind abiding in calmness. I made it using Ultra Fractal, Gimp, Inkscape, and a photograph taken at Aurinko (=Sun) shop with my Ixus 170, like my previous Buddha images. Prints on RedBubble.
It is a basic reclining Buddha, bathed in golden light. The rays emanating from the head are arrayed according to "nautical lines", that is, they are 1/32th of a circle, or 11.25°, apart.
Regarding "calm abiding", here is an excerpt from Saṃyutta Nikāya 35.116:

"Monks, that dimension should be experienced where the eye [vision] stops and the perception [label] of form fades. That dimension should be experienced where the ear stops and the perception of sound fades... where the nose stops and the perception of aroma fades... where the tongue stops and the perception of flavor fades... where the body stops and the perception of tactile sensation fades... where the intellect stops and the perception of idea/phenomenon fades: That dimension should be experienced."

The picture did not make it into the compo. I am unsurprised. One of my earlier works elicited the comment "when you have no talent, you have to intentionally do shit". Well, I'll admit that I've previously done semi-intentionally bad prods as a self-deprecating gesture, but, even when I try, I am reminded of the saying "shit has its maker" - and, dear reader, it is I. 

I also took part in the Animated Gif competition with this work:

Scroll of Happiness

Unsurprisingly, it was disqualified as well. In fact, since the organizers of the party are german, and you can find a swastika in there, I think it might've even been illegal if they'd shown it publicly.

These days, overly strict rules and rigid adherence thereto are colloquially called "nazi". So, it's ironically funny that this ageless symbol is the subject of this kind of "nazi" regulation. As a buddhist, I will continue to try and take back the Swastika. After all, the "nazis" were a mere blip in the history of the Swastika, the NSDAP no longer exists, so I see no reason for the continued demonization of this ancient symbol. Furthermore, since the Swastika is a sacred, holy symbol in several world religions, banning it is religious persecution - inadvertently, perhaps.

So, in the spirit of reclaiming this symbol, here's another Swastika animation. This was done in Processing:

Jumalan 2020

Om Svaha

This piece is titled Om Svaha. It was made with vvvv, Processing, Gimp and a photograph I took at the Aurinko shop. Prints are available on RedBubble.
It is about the fundamental and universal nature of sound or, more generally, waves. Wave-particle duality and the interchangability of mass and energy mean that basically, the All can be thought of as a wave field. Within this field there are special forms, such as the sine waves emanating from the Buddha's third eye, and the "divine" sound of Om.
I've dealt with waves before.
The picture participated in the Graphics competition at JumaLAN '20. It placed #7/8.

Vortex 2019

I participated in the Graphics competition of Vortex IV with this image, Vajra Samadhi:

Vajra Samadhi

It placed 4th out of 6.
The backgroud is made in Processing, while the image itself is composed in Gimp, of elements made in Inkscape and Flame Painter.
The translation I read renders Vajrasamadhi as "the Single-Taste, Definite, Signless, Beyond-Creation, Absolute Reality of Self-Enlightenment". Vajra, directly translated, means "diamond" or "thunderbolt", and is used to allude to indestructibility and irresistible force, respectively. "Samadhi" I've seen translated as "absorption", meditative consciousness more broadly, a state of trance and jhana in particular. The "Diamond Absorption" of Vajra Samadhi is "void and calm, motionless, non-abiding, non-creating, non-projecting, free from either this or that, untainted, non-arising and non-doing". In this way, it has a lot in common with The Fifth Jhana: Infinity of Space. Although the Buddha remained silent on whether the universe was finite or infinite, we can experientially know or at least conceive of an infinitude of space. When considering how much of even dense matter is "emptiness" as in empty space. How much more so the cosmos, where matter is so sparsely spread!
Contemplating this kind of emptiness, the emptiness of space, can lead to some understanding of a more profound emptiness, Shunyata. This is why I chose the starry space as the background. Even the Buddha likened the calm mind to empty space. The streak is supposed to be reminiscent of the Milky Way and other galaxies, but also of electromagnetic, gravitational and other invisible forces and even string theory. String theory is interesting in that it is a theory of everything that seemingly could work. I don't actually approve of it, nor do I disparage it, because, as the linked sutra says, "the mind that fabricates nothing neither clings to nor rejects anything". This is freedom of thought.

Skrolli Party 2019

This weekend, I participated in Skrolli Party. I contributed this image to the Wild Compo (there were only two competition categories, Demo and everything else, ie. Wild):

Bodhicitta

It was made with an image from Wikimedia Commons, Gimp, Processing and Blender.
It placed 9th out of 11. 
The Swastika on the left stands for Samsara, the Wheel of Life, or cyclical existence. I have read that the Swastika also symbolizes the footsteps of the Buddha. By following these footsteps, we get from left to right, to the light symbolizing enlightenment.
On the third eye of the Buddha shines the Seed of Life pattern, standing here for the seed of the holy life, a life lived according to the five precepts and the Noble Eight-fold Path, with the Buddha-Dharma as a guide. Of course, the Buddha also warned about grasping at precepts: with right view, the right effort of following precepts is almost effortless, and does not involve attachment.
The aspiration for personal liberation (Hinayana) or Buddhahood (Mahayana) is Bodhicitta, the title of this work, meaning roughly a mind aiming at enlightened wisdom. Even though a life steered by such a mind aims at enlightenment and liberation, in the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha said:

all living beings will eventually be led by me to the final nirvana, the final ending of the cycle of birth and death. And when this unfathomable, infinite number of living beings have all been liberated, in truth not even a single being has actually been liberated.

This is the wonder of emptiness: no ceasing, no arising, no attainment, with nothing to attain.

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.

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).

Instanssi 2016

As long as I learned about them, I have liked Lissajous curves and related curves, along with their automated creating apparatus, such as Spirographs and Guilloché patterns.
I participated remotely in Instanssi 2016 with a quick Processing entry. It placed #3/3. I had scribbled together something resembling a classic Amiga effect, known as shadebobs, but it ran sub-1 frame per second on my netbook. So, to get a video capture out of it, and to support the event, I entered it in the compo at Instanssi. It was accepted into the "Pikkiriikkinen demo"/Intro competition, with the size only including the source file, which could've been squeezed down even more by making all the variable names single characters, but I couldn't be bothered. The standalone Linux application exported from Processing is ~4.3 MB, and even this needs the Java Runtime Environment, so the admittance into the Intro category is sketchy (geddit?), but then, the border between an intro and the environment always has been.
Anyway, turns out the effect is slow even on proper machines, so enjoy this still image of an effect that was meant to be animated.

Graffathon 2015

This past weekend, I took part in Graffathon, a three-day hackathon.


This demo (link has binaries/source) was made during the time of the party. It placed #25/32. The idea for it was to make a simple "memento mori" type of thing. We shall all melt away, like the skulls shown. I am skeleton jelly.
The music is by my friend, tzaeru. A later, more finished version of the song is available. The effect is a recreation of one from Doom, while the graphical assets were from VectorFree:

• Skull Decal by Jonny Doomsday
• Skull Vector Pack by inZane (unused)
• Skull Vector Image by Vecky Graphics

It uses a meter analysis tool by Wavesum for sync data. Syncs could have been improved a lot, but I gave up on this as I was unable to work on the prod on my own computer.
Releasing this made me realise I had not updated here about another HTeL production that I was a part of. The theme here is doing more with less - ironic, as the new demo plagiarizes an effect that the 386s of Doom's time had no trouble with, and yet it completely exhausts my Samsung N145 Plus (Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz). It's likely that I just can't code - time, indeed, to "upgrade my software", ie. thinking.

   
These days, everything, up to and including thinking, is becoming increasingly controlled. Just recently, a german was the victim of a police operation because she is a holocaust skeptic. Even in my native Finland, there have been outcries for laws against holocaust denialism. The fact that both of these cases deal with holocaust skepticism is purely accidental, by the way.
In any case, HTeL, as I see it, stands against this kind of infringement on our freedom of expression, with no internal quality control and an open joining process. Indeed, within our small sub-culture, it has elicited a very similar response to the skeptics mentioned above - to wit, a quote from the demoscene:

can someone ban this nazi scum please

As a funny aside, while editing this blog post on the bus, I got the message "The site you requested (matiaswilkman.blogspot.com) has been blocked". It seems the automated algorithms we employ to sanitize our information feeds are not as infallible as we'd like... or maybe my writings are more dissident than I've thought! 

Simulaatio 2015

This weekend, I participated in the awesome Simulaatio 6 demoparty. Here is my contribution to the short wild competition (max. 45 second running time):

• Linux 32 bit binary
• Linux x64 binary (tested and verified)
• Windows 32 bit binary
• Windows 64 bit binary

It's the spiritual successor to yyyy yy yyyy (ff fff ffff). The music is by my friend zax. Of the binary releases above, Linux 64 bit is what I developed on, and is the only one verified as working (by me and another user). If you try the builds for other platforms, let me know.
I drew inspiration from WOWGREAT, a cool blog that features abstract, geometric art, often done with Processing. I wanted it to show two ideas: a field recording soundtrack and a graphical style of painter's algorithm without canvas clearing. I thought there were too few productions where the buffer is not cleared every frame. It makes for a neat effect, reminiscent of classics, such as shadebobs. Different blending of the elements would be a possible avenue of development.
It placed #4 out of 12 in the compo.