The story of Drifters
In an undiscovered area, you’ve stumbled upon an unknown creature. It looks weirdly haunting, and you’re feeling a sense of unease.
You’re wondering what it’s doing.
It seems to move in patterns, and sometimes suddenly changes course. Is it communicating?
(to whom?)
Setting aside your discomfort for a moment, you’re realizing you could be seeing it wrong. While the creature does look eerie and its motivations are unclear, you realize every culture has its own appreciation of aesthetics, and you can’t help noticing there is a certain grace to this performance.
And it all makes sense.
You’re witnessing uncharted explorations of elegance.
Generative Choreography
The choreography of Drifters is based on a series of patterns that are procedurally generated by an algorithm. The patterns are based on the movement of underwater creatures, and the algorithm is designed to create a sense of fluidity.
Each edition consists of a series of movements that loop continuously. Some editions have more movement patterns than others, each is unique.
Attraction and Repulsion
The creatures alternate between attraction and repulsion. Sometimes they follow each other, and at other times they drift apart. But overall, their movements are synchronized. Whenever they are about to start a new pattern, they communicate to eachother by quickly lighting up their tentacles.
The algorithms
This artwork is 100% code-based and contains multiple algorithms. There are no pre-rendered images involved.
The slow-moving coral is built with a space-colonization algorithm. The background stipples are distributed using Poisson disk sampling, to ensure they never clump together and always have a certain distance from eachother. The underlying pattern is a noise function. The tentacles that are attached to the creatures use spring-like physics. The creatures themselves follow hidden attractors to create their movements.