Paintings and Drawings

Quietly Exploding into Life
Quietly Exploding Into Life 		Whirls and Swirls
Whirls And Swirls 		Scream in Stone
Screaming Stone 		Spielbergs Eye
Spielberg's Eye

Chaos Paints

Stephen Wolfram wrote a book recently called "A New Kind of Science". In it, he talks about how very simple programs that he calls Automata (which means something similar to Robots) can generate very complex patterns. Some even exhibit complexity and randomness normally thought to be a hallmark of only natural processes.

He has some very simple automata in particular that he focuses on, and describes how they work. So I gave it a go, and here's the results.

The images below (click through for the large source images) are the output of a Java program that "runs" the automata. The automata constructs the image row-by-row, each row being the result of some simple transformation of the previous row. The first row is set at random so that a few pixels are "on" and the rest are "off". The amazing complexity that results helps substantiate Wolfram's assertion that simple programs can generate extremely complex patterns. Think of that the next time you wonder why computers have so many bugs ;)

The software, including source-code, that generated these images is available, for free, here.

(the linked images are 1024x768, i.e. ready for use as your next desktop image :)

Biodiversity City and Mountains John
Spiny Mountains Steel Death Tron Antarctica
White Mountains Wolfram

Doodles

These drawings and paintings show some of my early efforts at drawing and painting. Though I did these when I was young, I think some are better than what I can do now... shows how important practice is!

Ad Astra
Ad Astra 		Alien Skull
Alien Skull 		Blue Flower
Blue Flower
Evolution
Evolution 		Huge Flower
Huge Flower 		Lotus Design
Lotus Design
Model
Model 		New Age Apple
New Age Apple 		Order vs. Anarchy
Order vs. Anarchy
Shadowy Man on a Shadowy Planet
Shadowy Man
on a
Shadowy Planet 		Swamp Thing
Swamp Thing