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About
Don Relyea's Blog

I like to write about interesting art projects, so give me a heads up if you have new project and I'll write about it.


Don Relyea
email:
don(at)donrelyea.com

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Blogs:
Chris Ashley
Tom Moody
BLDG blog
Walker Art Center
turbulence.org
collisiondetection.net
She Dreams in Digital
kevan.org
2blowhards.com
thinking about art
artblog.net
the generator blog
The Presurfer
Mike Butler
Erik Smartt
patentlysilly.com
angrypirate.com
Chris Jagers
Paperback Writer
lifehacker
Mark Gould
asquare.org
m.d. mcmullin
amovablefeast
accuracy and aesthetics
phawker.com

Bombshell



Agendas Under Fire



110th Assembly


Meret Oppenheim portrait


Image Reconstruction


Ready Made Glitch


Slit Scan 3d Images


Systemic Sky


Slit Scan Photography



Monochrome Generator


Space Filling Curve Art



Hair Particle Drawing

Arts and New Media
Sect of Homokaasu
Roman Verostko
Jared Tarbell
Marius Watz
Juergen Schwietering
MIT Media Lab
eyebeam.org
ARS Electronica
mocoloco.com
rhizome.org
runme.org
core77.com
IAAA
furtherfield.org
Cory Arcangel
Philip Galanter
Roy Stanfield
Adrian Ward
ambienttv.ne
Alex Dragulescu
toxi
generator x
database of virtual art
Blast Theory
Institute for Applied Autonomy
0100101110101101.org
Bathsheba Grossman
Ariel Malka
BLF
Art Crimes
Buff Monster
Hactivist
rtmark
Faile
Mute
Crumb
the Yes Men
Marcel
X257.com
moma
amoda.org
artforum
metropolismag.com
neural.it
EFF
{G2}
Kate Armstrong
no-org.net
mnartists.org
Casey Reas
Vlad_Nanca
digitalsouls
Transmediale
Media Art Net
treasurecrumbs
Art Interactive
Electronic Arts Intermix
artsjournal
MTAA
Suzanne G
onreact
Wooster Collective
computergraphica.com
hardisco.com
inhabitat.com
c505
recyclart
ultra eczema
Kris Davidson
Robert Spahr
drainmag.com
Thor Johnson

See a Hairy Bush at Siggraph 2007

Big Hairy Bush a generative portrait of President George Dubya Bush by Don Relyea(click to enlarge)

Small version of Hairy Bush (188k shockwave animated drawing)!

August 2007 Events
Big Hairy Bush, a print from my hair particle drawing project, was accepted into the Sigraph 2007 Art Gallery in San Diego! August 5-9th in San Diego CA. See it in person there!

Hair Particle drawing algorithm

Abstract:
The hair particle drawing project is a drawing engine based around a particle fx engine I wrote for a game. I modified the particles to behave like growing hair. Hair growing in darker areas grows longer, thicker and maintains a tighter curl. This is to preserve some of the detail that would get overgrown otherwise. Hair will continue to grow over time. This portrait of President Bush was grown over a weekend.

Statement:
I write my own software to create generative art and video.

The hair particle drawing project was originally intended to be and still is a component of a larger ongoing project. It is based around a particle fx engine I wrote for a game some time ago. I altered the particles to behave like growing hair. In the early stages of development the particles rendered long and flowing hair with loose curls. For the Big Hairy Bush application hair with a tighter more erratic curl was required. In general, hair growing in darker areas grows longer, thicker and maintains a tighter curl. This is to preserve some of the detail that would get overgrown otherwise. Hair will continue to grow over time. This portrait of President Bush was grown over a weekend.

Big Hairy Bush is intended to be non-partisan and humorous. It is my belief that all career politicians have something unattractive that they hide. Intentional or not the nature of their careers require compromise and back door dealing. President Bush was a convenient subject for this exercise but it is certainly possible to replace Bush with any career politician from either political party.

The beauty industry and the advertising industry have conditioned us to hide or cover up so called "unwanted hair" such as back hair, pubic hair, arm pit hair and leg hair. We cover it up, shave it and wax it off. With the proliferation of mass media it is desirable to white wash the unattractive traits of politicians. Using hair as a metaphor for that which is undesirable, what would politicians look like if they did not cover up their unwanted hair?

Technical Brief:
The Big Hairy Bush print was generated by a custom particle fx application written in image lingo within Adobe Director.

A small gif thumbnail of the President was downloaded and is used by the application for reference. The gif is parsed by the application at runtime grayscale index color values are stored in a lookup table. A particle manager was coded to prevent the application from overloading. The particle manager references the lookup table and based on the lookup table data it assigns a group of hair particles to various locations in the canvas area and initializes them.

Once a particle has been initialized it begins to draw itself maintaining a variety of vectors including, scale, opacity, mutators, growth direction and life span. Mutators are passed to the particles to cause them to grow gray or more kinky. When a particle has reached the end of its life span it disposes of itself and messages the particle manager that it is done drawing.

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Akiyoshi KITAOKA illusion pages

Akiyoshi's illusion pages
I found this page a while back and forgot to post about it. It is a page with images that give the illusion of movement. You really need to see the large versions on his site, they are pretty amazing. Work by Akiyoshi KITAOKA, Professor, Department of Psychology, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan

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