Author: hk3905

One idea that really stood out to me was the critique of reductionism and emphasis on emergence. The author argues that while breaking a system into parts can help us understand structure, it fails to explain the behavior when many parts interact together. I really liked the example of the ant colonies as the every single ant follows just simple rules, but together the colony displays intelligence, coordination and problem solving. This really made me think how intelligence doesn’t really require complexity at an individual level, it can arise from interactions.

What also really stood out to me was the idea that we should focus less on “What is X” and more on “What will X do in the presence of Y”. This feels really connected to interactive media and computation in general as behavior emerges through systems rather than  isolated elements. The reading made me really think about if complex systems can immerge from simple rules how much creative control do we really have when designing a system? But overall I really enjoyed the reading and I can surely say it has changed how I think about complexity and the connection between systems and nature in general.

Concept

While talking to my friends about randomness in nature we discussed about different organisms in nature and how they move. Specifically we discussed the Brownian motion which explores the seemingly random motion of particles in liquids. I decided that I would try to recreate this motion of particles in a colorful and a bit more hectic way so it has its own twist to it. For this I decided to use Lévy flight which in simple terms would allow the object to “walk” in shorter or longer distances at a time. I also wanted to bring some hue to the mix to make the experience more colorful and in my opinion prettier.  This makes the whole project more expressive and more engaging and brings it to another level. 

What we get in the end is an interesting yet beautiful play of particles on the screen. I also added a shadow to the ellipse, precisely behind it, that changes color depending on the distance the particle has covered. So the hue is actually affected by the random distance.

Code highlight

if (step < 0.1) {
  step = random(20, 90); // the big jump
} else {
  step = random(1, 6); // the small jump
}
let angle = random(TWO_PI);

x += cos(angle) * step;
y += sin(angle) * step;

// wrap around screen
if (x < 0) x += width;
if (x > width) x -= width;
if (y < 0) y += height;
if (y > height) y -= height;

I am proud of this code as this is the main code that controls the movement logic of the “simulation”. I think it was really fun figuring out how to translate something from the real world into code/computer and I think I did a pretty good job at keeping the code clean and short but functional.

Reflection and future improvements

Overall this project was fun to work on and I really enjoyed “translating” real life movement into a program. Also since I haven’t worked in p5js for a bit I think this was a great way to get back into the habit and restart my p5 journey. In the future I would like to possibly add a functionality to add more particles (ellipses) and have them collide with each other.