For this assignment I was inspired by Sol Lewitt’s work called Wall Drawings. I wanted to create an algorithm that connects multiple points together with lines similar to the artist’s work which asked people to draw points and join them together with straight lines.
I started off with figuring out how to put random points on the canvas but using classes and arrays. Then, I proceeded on to figure out how to connect them and get rid of the original points. And then I used some code that we saw in class and modified it a little according to my needs to make the points move. I also used the background opacity feature to create a mesmerizing artwork that become more and more hypnotic the more you click on it.
Sketch:
Problems and Potential Future work:
I want to create a further element of interactivity where the points (or lines) move away from the user’s mouse as it is hovered over the canvas. I tried doing it, but ran into confusion due to multiple things going on with the classes and arrays already.
let fiftyballs = []; //array for storing however many balls the user wants to create let xPosition = []; //arrays for x and y position of each point the line begins from let yPosition = []; let x_Pos; //global variables to make it easy to store the x and y positions of the points let y_Pos; let R = 236; let G = 238; let B = 129; let totalcount = 5; // variable for number of points to be created class ballproducer { constructor() { this.xPos = random(10, width - 10); this.yPos = random(10, height - 10); x_Pos = this.xPos; y_Pos = this.yPos; this.xSpeed = random(-3,3); this.ySpeed = random(-3,3); } move() { // move the ball this.xPos += this.xSpeed; this.yPos += this.ySpeed; x_Pos = this.xPos; y_Pos = this.yPos; } checkForCollisions() { // check first for left and right wall if (this.xPos <= 15 || this.xPos >= width - 15) { this.xSpeed = -this.xSpeed; } // do the same for the ceiling and the floor if (this.yPos <= 15 || this.yPos >= height - 15) { this.ySpeed = -this.ySpeed; } } draw() { circle(this.xPos, this.yPos, 0); } } function setup() { createCanvas(600, 600); frameRate (60); for (let i = 0; i < totalcount; i++) { fiftyballs[i] = new ballproducer(); } } function draw() { background(R, G , B ,15); for (let i = 0; i < totalcount; i++) { xPosition[i] = x_Pos; yPosition[i] = y_Pos; fiftyballs[i].draw(); fiftyballs[i].move(); fiftyballs[i].checkForCollisions(); line(xPosition[i], yPosition [i], xPosition[i-1], yPosition[i-1]); //draws the line from the previous to the next point } } function mouseClicked(){ //each mouse click adds +1 lines to the graphic R = random(140,237); G = random(160,238); B = random(129,237); fiftyballs[totalcount] = new ballproducer(); // adds a new value to the array which has the objects for the balls totalcount = totalcount+1; //increases the number of points or lines by 1 on each click }