Zupermat
Zupermat is the infinite documentary on the life of pseudo-random rectangular cuboids. Sometimes a deep dive into a particular side of their construction, other times a broad portrait of their organization as gangs, mob and anarcho-secret societies.
The smooth and transient aspects of Zupermat will let the collector cohabitate with the piece while softly populating his peripheral vision. A brief glance, while immersed in reflection, should provide the reassuring motion to dive deeper into thought - or emerge with a newfound sense of direction.
You can browse the collection on Artblocks or Archepelago.
published: May 6th, 2022
library: three.js r124
controls: [space] to pause and reflect
Zupermat - Notes and Features
This piece started with the idea of taking 2d-paper-and-paint constructivism and suprematism and expressing it in a three dimensional space.
For a deeper dive into the technical details and ideas behind Zupermat, an Artblocks: Behind the Code episode is available on the tube:
On Animation and the point of view
As I was working of lighting and composition, I kept navigating into the piece to verify alignments, check the lighting and debug the rendering. As the piece matured, I kept rendering the structure front and center and often the point of view was missing a beautiful detail hidden by a larger object. It became clear that I had to find a way to make these details available to the viewer because it added a lot to my enjoyment of the piece. I experimented with intro animation and different point of view and decided to build into the piece a longform travelling camera that randomly visits every ship in the composition. The point of view is biased towards a long frontal view (also with a random element) and will once in a while pick an object and travel close to it and allow to viewer to take in all the detail (or lack thereof ;-) of this new point of view. The spacebar freezes the motion and let's you take a screenshot of enjoy the piece from that angle for a longer time.
Traits and Features
The following is a short description of most of the features of Zupermat. Most of the features are based on randomly generated number and are converted to descriptive strings in the token to simplyfy comparison and search.
Angle Regime
piet: 90° angles
von: 45° angles
vich: random angles
Edges
The ships have rounded edges. This feature caracterizes the radius of the edge. There are 3 mode with some wiggle room: tight, rounded and bubble
bubbly
rounded
tight
Environment
This feature is the background.
backplaned
very light
very dark
Organization
The organization addresses the way ships are positioned in space. In a gang organization, three directions are chosen and ships are positioned tightly around the direction beams. In a mob organization, 5 directions are chosen and the ship a placed in those directions but in a loose manner. In the anarchopanda organization, their is no organization. Ships are beamed out in every direction.
gang
mob
anarchopanda
Palette
The palette regulates the lighting and the colours in general
soapbar mudbar: pale blue, pale red, sometimes mud
primary sink: saturated primary colors
pasteleria: pastels of all kinds
sliver: silver blues
royalty: royal gold
royalty++ royal velvet
pure guava: bright orange and green - just like the fruit and the album
Rotation influence
How agressively are we going to apply the angle regime? These images are examples of the soapbar mudbar palette when things get muddy.
mixed influence
total influence
irrelevant
Size bias
This is the size of the surrounding ships.
mostly small
mixed
mostly long
Time of day
The time of day affects the overall lighting of the piece. It will modulate colors and light positions.
dawn
day
dusk