Inspiration
At home in Dubai there are many palm trees around where I live. Since I was young I’ve always noticed birds travelling between trees and staying at some trees for a short while only to move again later. I always found their movement very calming so I wanted to replicate this in code and hopefully evoke the same emotions.
Core Concept and Design
The sketch simulates a flock of birds moving between trees. Trees are placed using the noise function where at the highest points in the noise function a tree is placed. Birds spawn at trees, fly toward a randomly chosen tree, and upon arrival wait 1–3 seconds before selecting a new destination. Their movement is influenced by a flow field (vector field) to create more organic movement.
Technical Implementation
This was my first significant milestone. By this point I had created the tree class and the bird class. The bird class has functions which I copied from the Mover class we have used/replicated in previous lectures. I did at first use the random() function for the placement of the trees but would later implement the noise function I mentioned earlier. 
This is the current stage that I’m at. I added the vector field and changed the colors of the birds to brown without any stroke. The deviations in movement from the vector field were small at first but it was only after some time and by taking advantage of lowering the opacity of the background that I was able to notice the subtleties.
Future Improvements
Planned extensions to expand the system into multiple distinct modes:
1. No Mountains — Current baseline state
2. Mountains with Repulsion — Randomly placed mountains that birds navigate around using repulsion forces
3. Central Tree — A focal tree where birds travel back and forth in a more structured pattern
4. Nighttime / Daytime — Different visual states (e.g., color palette, lighting) to produce varied aesthetic outputs
These modes will increase the variety of visual outputs and support the requirement for multiple distinct operating states.
References
p5.js — p5js.org for the creative coding environment
Perlin Noise — Ken Perlin’s noise algorithm for smooth, natural-looking randomness
Flow Fields — Technique commonly used in generative art and particle systems
(although the noise() function in p5js is not exactly noise its still worth referencing)