Posts by salamander@merveilles.town
(DIR) Post #2171170 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T18:58:07Z
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PendantBronze, 2017with Jo Smith as Mereo Design
(DIR) Post #2171171 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:03:31Z
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From mereo:"Not only is jewellery expressive — it can stimulate a contemplative state of mind. I embrace contradiction through my designs: each piece contains a duality of forces brought into synthesis. I replicate the naturalistic origins of pyrite through technological means." (cont)
(DIR) Post #2171172 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:18:21Z
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... "The name “Mereo” means “made of parts,” from the Greek root for “parts” and the suffix “-eo,” which indicates material composition. The close study of crystalline formations reveals the way in which a complex whole is produced through generative processes applied to simple, geometric fragments." (cont)
(DIR) Post #2171173 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:27:31Z
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... "Through my (jo's) work, I embrace human creativity and ingenuity as computational automatization replaces traditional labour at unprecedented rates. My products are created using 3D modelling and printing. This means that they can be ethically produced through means that require little manual labour, space, and wasted material resources. I wish to challenge the notion that made-to-order, high-quality craftsmanship is inefficient or unattainable."
(DIR) Post #2171174 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:47:31Z
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For this project, I designed the fractal pyrite algorithm. Jo designed all the jewelry that makes use of it. The idea is that every piece is printed to order with a different seed, and therefore the value comes from the scarcity of having a unique seed.After looking at a number of real world pyrite crystals, I wrote the first version in Unity (below), and then I helped jo re-write it in blender.
(DIR) Post #2172224 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:35:52Z
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@brennan I'm acting as technical support / advisor to Jo, who is the principle artist.
(DIR) Post #2172227 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T19:53:11Z
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@brennan I am sure jo would be interested to learn more about what you are doing :research:
(DIR) Post #2181127 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-21T20:49:28Z
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@dualhammers you just summed up a feeling I have never been able to put into words before!
(DIR) Post #2197467 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-22T20:18:46Z
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except from a thing (feedback welcome):"Dependence is something our left-brained, myopic, structural society seeks to rout out. Individuals are better economic units that create more wealth in a capitalist system because fewer connections means less nepotism and more efficient use of resources. We see everything as a sum of parts and not as a whole. As if there are clean, sterile interfaces between the boundaries we draw up to separate entities."(cont)
(DIR) Post #2197528 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-22T20:19:16Z
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"Reality is not so simple; if you look closely dependence is everywhere. Boundaries are leaky, especially the ones we use to define ourselves. They leak out of us and into the people around us, into our environment through our actions. Into our garbage cans through our waste. Our blanket of self is soiled with the world around us, and our own fluids mark it with our histories."(cont)
(DIR) Post #2197529 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-22T20:20:12Z
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"The other and the self are not so different. The dead skin is the the other to the living skin it sits on top of. The body is the other to the mind. The conscious is the other to the subconscious. Through these leaky boundaries we are bound to our environment inextricably. Independence is a myth used to justify a cost to the other for a gain of the self."
(DIR) Post #2197568 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-22T20:27:12Z
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@neauoire this bit is a reference to earlier in the essay. The blanket is the boundary around the self (in the sense of a markov blanket and also of skin). I'm just noting that the blanket isn't a clean interface with poetic license.
(DIR) Post #2197717 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-22T20:34:28Z
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@neauoire I think a little word smithing and it'll end up somewhere between the two.Thanks for the feedback.
(DIR) Post #2252808 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-20T18:37:47Z
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The first thing I worked on was the procedural modeling and evolution of the ground. The ground layers are described by fBM/turbulence/summed 3d perlin noise functions. Evolving the ground was accomplished by treating the 3rd dimension as time.The layers represent sand, water, dirt, rock, volcanic rock and darkmatter and have different densities. One bug is that sometimes the water layers peek out the wrong side.
(DIR) Post #2252809 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-20T18:45:02Z
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the next thing I worked on was the procedural tree growth mechanism with xoorath. They are L-Systems with some pretty straightforward properties: branching factor, stiffness, how much they turn up to the sun, spread, etc. Which tree grows depends on the soil where the seed lands and the amount of water the roots reach.
(DIR) Post #2252810 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-20T18:54:43Z
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Ben and Devine did the design, modeling, naming system etc. The sound is nice and atmospheric too.It was published to an ipad to be played with as a simple toy. We were pretty happy with the outcome for a 48hr jam. Donsol was made on the same trip with @eternal, I think.I just dug it up and got it building on Unity 2018.1. Here's a video (unfortunately missing audio):https://youtu.be/GHiOGL7WU5I
(DIR) Post #2252811 by salamander@merveilles.town
2018-12-24T16:49:39Z
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here's @neauoire shot on noirca from some point on that train ride.
(DIR) Post #A0ZGlLlJz1Bv8vegHg by salamander@merveilles.town
2020-10-26T19:16:27Z
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Thinking about hosting a merveilles meetup, mid 2021 (COVID permitting). 1-2 weeks longMaybe: Art residency and group art making. Cooking for each other. Eco technology discussions. Natural building projects. Musical performances.Anyone interested?
(DIR) Post #A6aQVaLXS5hZYwAI1g by salamander@merveilles.town
2021-03-16T04:51:22Z
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Made our first maple syrup on the land today
(DIR) Post #A97A9PbewdQyO5Ocmu by salamander@merveilles.town
2021-07-09T02:28:33Z
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I've been struggling with finding a way to share what I've learned over the last decade with other folx in a broader way. Sometimes it feels like I want to write a set of essays, other times it feels like a monthly podcast or something would be better. Much of the time I worry that doing this work will be wasting the little free time I have. People that have put the effort into something like this... has it been worth it?