Karl Sims
Karl Sims presents RD Tool, 2022, Seven Experiments in Procedural Animation，2018, Panspermia，1990, and Particle Dreams，1988, in the Educational Artists Room
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RD Tool is an interactive web application for generating dynamic shapes and patterns by simulating two virtual chemicals that react and diffuse on a 2D grid, using the Gray-Scott model. Chemical A is added throughout the grid at a given "feed" rate. Chemical B replicates by consuming A, but dies off at a given "kill" rate. Different types of patterns emerge when using different values for the feed and kill rates. The varying concentrations of B are colorized and shown during the simulation.
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These animated textures and patterns were created from custom computer code employing various fractal algorithms, procedural noise, and reaction-diffusion techniques. The moving images are purely defined by mathematics, but are meant to evoke a biological aesthetic by resembling sea creatures, neurons, or other microscopic structures that transform from one emergent pattern to another. A 5-minute version of this piece was exhibited at ARS Electronica in the Deep Space 8K Theater and the 2019 Animation Festival in Linz Austria. The original one-hour version was commissioned by Boston Cyberarts for the 35-foot video wall in the courtyard of The Exchange at 100 Federal Street in Boston.
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Panspermia is the name for the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores. This animation places the viewer in the middle of a virtual world of an aggressively reproducing inter-galactic life form, and depicts a single life cycle of this unusual self propagating system. Original software was used to create and animate forests of 3D plant structures. "Artificial evolution" techniques were used to interactively select from random mutations of plant shapes until a variety of interesting structures emerged. The subject matter of the piece suggests the underlying biological methods that were used to efficiently create an unusual level of complexity. Dynamic simulations and particle systems were also employed to achieve motions that are calculated automatically.
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This computer animation contains a collection of dream sequences created using 3D particle systems techniques. Behavior rules are applied to thousands of individual particles to model complex phenomena such as an explosion, a snowstorm, a tumultuous head, and a waterfall. Parallel computation was used to perform physical simulations on thousands of particles simultaneously, one processor for each particle.
