For my animated abstraction, I wanted to keep the general idea of a gradient circle pattern based on Zanis Waldheims’ artworks. However, I wanted to make the circles move around and follow each other, in order to keep the gradient in the correct order. Using these criteria, gradient “snakes” made out of circles were born. Here they are, moving around with “default settings”:

Default settings mean that the “snakes” move at a constant speed, have a set amount of randomness to their movements, and have a set speed for their desaturation to change. I like the idea that they randomly choose where to go, and it adds to the feeling that they are living creatures making their own decisions.

In order to add some more interesting visuals and another element to the project, I added a playlist which will randomly select and play sounds. When different sounds are played, it randomly effects the “default” settings mentioned earlier. Different sounds can add or subtract from the values which affect the speed or randomness movement of the snakes. Generally this leads to the circles being more colorful, spaced out, and fast.

As you can see, it gets notably more hectic:

Within the project there are multiple things for the user to interact with.

Just as within the original Geometric Abstraction, it is entirely possible to set the saturation of the primary colors. In addition there is a toggle to turn the sound (and therefore the random settings) on and off, and also a button to reset the settings to their default values. After I decided I had completed my Max artwork, I played around with the settings for quite a while. I believe that letting the project run randomly is the best way to experience the art.

Finally, here is the beast- and a gorgeous amount of Max spaghetti for optimal confusion.