The Computational Beauty of Nature – Ch1
The concepts explored in this reading were very central to how we view things and analyze not only nature but also human-made systems like the stock market. What left a strong impression on me is how important it is to analyze interaction in order to truly understand what something is. At the beginning of this chapter, Flake introduces the idea of reductionism, which is the process of reducing something into increments to better understand its true nature.
In my understanding, we are invited to look at this from a rather “scientific” lens in order to see how we could apply a similar concept in computing. This leaves me with the impression that it is very important for us to first understand how dissecting something in terms of meaning can then help us introduce that understanding to a computer.
The Concept
My concept is inspired by fireflies. Having never experienced them, I have always been curious about what it would feel like to interact with one, so why not simulate it?
For the sake of simulating human-to-firefly interaction, I did not want the firefly to simply float around randomly. I wanted it to follow the mouse around the sketch in order to translate a sense of curiosity between both the firefly and the user.
I implemented a Gaussian random walk (List 1) and mapped the motion to color and brightness to create a firefly glow effect (List 2).
Code that I am proud of
let glow = 220 + randomGaussian() * 20; glow = constrain(glow, 140, 255);
I’m proud of this part of the code because I wanted the firefly’s glow to feel as natural as possible. Using Gaussian randomness makes the brightness fluctuate gently instead of jumping unpredictably, and constraining the values keeps the light within a realistic range.
The Sketch
Reflection
Initially, I wanted to mimic bacteria and binary fission, but that idea felt a bit too ambitious at this stage. I decided to step back and focus on exploring motion in a simpler way, which led me to this firefly concept. I was interested in creating something that felt organic and calm rather than complex.
For future work, I wanted to place the firefly over an image of a forest, but I realized that doing so would either cause the firefly’s trail to disappear or require the background to fade over time. I think finding a way to balance a real forest image with the artificial movement of the firefly could be an interesting direction to explore further.