This project is an evolution on, and merging of a few of my prior works. With Comets at Dawn I used attracting and repelling forces to shape a vector field, then let many thousands of particles move through that field, and leave marks as they went. Separately, for Eucalyptus and Sagebrush, Sunset from the Bluffs, and Hello Modulo I developed a rendering style that mimics some aspects of crayons/pencils/etc. I brought those two things together for this work, and iterated further. Bringing in the concept of shape packing, I limited how far any particle can travel in the vector field depending on whether other particles had already been there. As the particles move, they draw paths formed of many small rectangles attached end to end.

Interestingly, as I looked through hundreds of outputs, I started seeing recognizable scenes and objects emerging from the abstract marks. A bit like a Rorschach test, different people looking at the images saw different things. I hope you enjoy In the Current, and be sure to look deeper than the surface to see what forms appear to you.

Nat Sarkissian