The title of the work means "spontaneous vision arising in meditation". It was made with Gimp, Apophysis and Google Earth Pro. Several Buddha images have arisen to me in closed-eye meditation, although this particular image was not one of them, but was inspired by one of them. So, it would be better termed a "Paribhaga nimitta" - an image that has been subjected to mental manipulation. The photo was taken at the Aurinko shop. Prints are available on RedBubble.
I took part in the Graphics compo at Instanssi 2020 with it. It placed #11/16.
The idea of the image is that everything, including the world, is mental.
Mind precedes all knowables,
mind's their chief, mind-made are they.
"What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All.
I also participated in the "Summamutikka" or "Wild" compo with this work, Golden Frog:
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.
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:
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).
I made a new FFGL mixer. The effect is the same as in my earlier Graffathon entry. There are two versions of this effect: one where the source being mixed into is revealed from behind the dripping source, and another where the second source also drips into view. It would be possible to make one where the second source drips into view in front of the first, but I didn't.
It's perhaps best demonstrated by this video:
The source is available on Github. There is also a release with Windows binaries (32 and 64 bit). For other platforms, you will need to build from source.
Concussion from dep on Vimeo.
For a few years now, I've been involved in Concussion Crew, a breakbeat oriented group from my town, Tampere. Concussion's got a radio show on NuBreaks every two weeks (podcast archive). In addition, we try to put together dubstep/drum'n'bass/breaks/etc parties when we can. The last such occasion was on October the 16th. The night was a blast, as you can hopefully gather from these pictures by Jussi Punamäki:
I enjoy parties where I have a bit more time to prepare and plan ahead, which is one of the reasons that I like working as part of the Concussion collective. This time, we'd taken inspiration from the header image at our website, and gathered some old televisions to use as stage decorations.
The TV's were fed an image from vvvv, through a karlklomp style dirty mixer where it was mixed with the output from an aptly named Video Technology Rhythmic 8 synthesizer. The raw combination of the sound to the composite video signal results in some nice glitches, that can be controlled quite well with the synth's features. A nice point about the installation was that all parts were recycled.
I thought of a way to blend images that I haven't seen before. I wanted to see how it looks, so I implemented it in vvvv, and now I've wrapped it up as an FFGL plugin. I call the blend mode "color wrap". Here's what it looks like:
This is the first mixer effect that I've done (well, I did do a time switcher once, but that doesn't really mix the images :). FFGL mixers are basically just effects that require 2 input textures. The first FFGL parameter you define will be bound to the opacity slider in the host application (by convention, anyway).
Downloads:
Also, it looks like I've forgotten to post the link to one effect previously. It's called Stop Motion, and as the name implies, it's a freeze frame effect. Binaries and source code are available in the Assembla repo, as usual.
Edge Detection, with support for Sobel and Laplace filters (adapted from examples in the OpenGL Superbible - a great OpenGL resource!)
Wave Warp, which can distort the image according to a few different basic waveforms (sine, square, sawtooth, triangle and noise). Update 4.8.2010: the HLSL vvvversion of this plugin is now available at vvvv.org.
Polar Coordinates. Swaps between polar and cartesian interpretations for coordinate pairs. This one is not included in the Resolume release, so you'll need to get it at Assembla.
New: Chroma Key. A lot of people have been asking for this, but don't get too excited: this is a very rudimentary key, with a few tweaks but not really comparable to commercial chroma keyers. The source is available, of course, and improvements are more than welcome. The plugin is definitely not a replacement for preprocessing with a real keyer, but a "better than nothing" solution for eg. realtime green screen applications.
I have just finished some new FFGL video effect plugins. These plugins were commissioned by the good folks at Resolume, and the newly released Resolume 3.1.3 comes pre-packaged with them. We've agreed to still keep the source open, so head over to the Assembla repository if you want to have a look. I think this decision is a great show of support for the visualist community as a whole, so big cheer to Edwin and Bart of Resolume!
The new plugins are:
Shift Glitch (similar to the Barshift FF1.0 effects)
Strobe (like Stroboscope, but as an effect)
There are also improved versions of the old plugins,
Stroboscope
Static
Static Source
I've had a lot of fun working with Bart & Edwin, so hopefully you can expect more effects from me in the future.
ScrollStrip and Static plugins at work
Last summer, I made some FFGL plugins for use with Resolume Avenue. I've been thinking about doing more and eventually releasing them, but haven't gotten around to it yet, so here are the ones I have. They're mostly just simple functionality that I felt was missing from Resolume 3 (coming from 2.41) when it was released.
On a related note, I've started an Assembla space for FFGL plugin developers. You can find it here. Assembla offers some useful functionality for developers, such as a Wiki and version control. It should be joinable for all, so all you need to do to take advantage of it is join Assembla (it's free), log in and join the space.
Anyway, here are the plugins. They are Windows builds, but sources are included for all except the first two:
TimeSwitcher - A simple FFGL mixer plugin, like the Timeswitcher mixer in Resolume 2. Unfortunately, I've lost the sources.
Stroboscope - A simple FFGL Stroboscope source plugin. Same here - no sources :(
Static - Simple whitenoise, with options for grayscale and two-tone noise. Has sources :)
ScrollStrip - A filmstrip-like FFGL plugin (see image). Shaders not required.
I wanted to take a look at the new ActionScript support in Resolume 3(.1.1). So, I ported an old test I had done, with much the same purpose, for Resolume 2.41. It's a simple sine wave generator. Too bad Avenue does not support sending FFT data to Flash, like Resolume 2 did - this would be really easy to turn into a spectrum analyser kind of thing if it did.
Download links (including Flash project files and Resolume compatible swf files):
