Here's a rendered sequence of a particles test I've been working on. Made in Houdini.

For my first project, the task is to create an artist work inspired by the pre-lingual imagination described by Jaques Lacan. In this space, nothing can be recognizable, because once we recognize an object, we immediately start making mental associations with it, or converting it into the realm of language and symbols.

I like to think of this stage as the first stage of perception, when the world outside us is merely electrical signals in our neurons, and has not been connected with the parts of our brain that makes meaning of what we percieve. Any observer of an artistic work, however, is constantly trying to make mental connections, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. For this reason, I would like to create an artistic work that challenges the viewer's sense of perception by playing with combinations of out-of-focus forms, foreground-background reversal, cryptic soundscapes. and complicated particle effects. Additionally, the piece itself will loop so that it has no end and cannot be siloed into a discreet experience in the viewer's mind.

Visual References

I love the constant forward movement in this piece and the way that sometimes forms almost appear amidst the wisps of color. I wonder how he made this in 1974!?

In this video, I like the way that the discreet spheres are gracefully able to imply many different dynamic forms, almost like an array of 3 dimensional pixels. Their speed of movement is relatively slow, but also varies to add energy to the piece.

For the background, I've been toying width the idea of using audio renderings of EEG recordings made during REM sleep to drive parameters in a non-physical fluid simulation.

Links

• http://www.experimentalanimation.co.uk/
• http://spacecollective.org/fredjc/3081/The-Sound-of-Cosmic-Background-Radiation
• http://www.psfk.com/2010/08/the-sound-of-brainwaves.html