week 13

attempting to programme a fractal

descriptive

so initially, there was another approach i wanted to take with my research. to put simply it’s the practice of adopting a mindset of deluding oneself to enjoy an unpleasant experience. i don’t think i have to capacity of dealing with experiments on that currently, and i’ve decided to put that thought away for now, and concentrate on using sensory experiences to improve mindfulness practices.

my focus of this week - creating biophilic fractal visuals

to my pleasant surprise, there were already a lot of codes out there of biophilic fractals. they were all based off a few mathematical sets. the most famous two sets were the juliet set and the mandelbrot set. turns out fractals are a set of iterative equations to explore the behaviour of numbers on the complex plane. i’m not a mathematician, so i skipped the heavy parts of the readings. what i could do as a creative was to recreate these visuals and use them in a more immersive form as i had planned.

experiments

i played around with the fractal codes i found online. recreating one of these was way too complex for me. i wanted to do something that would let the code morph into different iterations of fractals. everything i could find online was based on either slider or mouse control which created a different static iteration of the equation. i also didn’t really enjoy the colours in the default codes. was there something i could do to change the colours as well, where users could choose colours that were more comforting to them?

i found these other sources on github which were really interesting, but i don’t know how to apply it on my code. (i tried inserting things in randomly to see what it does)

this made me wonder if i should try experimenting with physical objects. perhaps designing prototypes / objects that are helpful to mindfulness exercises. i can still apply the critical journal method to my research.

but i’ve decided to stop my bullshit and focus on something of a smaller scale. i will try combining biophilic visuals and mindfulness exercises. biophilia will be used to appeal to people to try out mindfulness exercise themselves, and the act of recording down a completed mindfulness exercise everyday encourages people to be diligent in keeping up those exercises. there have been studies of the impacts of mindfulness practices that reflect positive mental health-related outcomes.

basically i’m exploring generative art and data collection.

analytical

doing something i’m not at all knowledgeable in was a pathetic try and a brave attempt, but i’ve been humbled and forced to stick to something within my capabilities. nothing worked well. as i have deadlines to meet, i can leave biophilic fractals for something i can research about in my free time.

i decided to reduce my expectations as i wanted to stop reading and focus on my experiments and prototype making. i don’t feel too bad about this, however. my project was initially centred around the collection and translation of data into imagery all the way back in week 1 of semester 1. exploring what else i could do with my research on burnout and alternative outcomes was me attempting to branch out and try out things that were out of my comfort zone. finding out about biophilia and fractals gives me something to work with, and gives me something less to think about (aesthetic and design style of the generative imagery i have to create).

reflective

i can’t lie, it’s a bit disappointing that i am unable to work with the research i have due to an intense skill issue… but it’s alright.

while testing out the juliet and mandelbrot set fractals, i did ask around on how others viewed this type of imagery. the reactions were just alright, so i guess fractals aren’t all that relaxing anyways, and it should have been an early sign for me to change my research direction.

i also had trouble thinking of how to make these on-screen visuals more appealing and immersive. i didn’t know how i was going to combine the usage of sound and visuals together, when the visuals produced were already so intricate and hard to deal with on their own.