Concept
In many houses here in the UAE and the Gulf region, the art displayed around homes often reflect culture and faith. For this weeks coding assignment I wanted to integrate the two pieces of art found in many Arab homes that I love the most. The first being bakhoor. The burning of bakhoor is a common tradition especially when welcoming guests, filling the space with oud and mysk fragrance. It involves using mabkhara, and adding a hot piece of coal in the middle. Then we add different kinds of oud sticks as well.
The second piece I wanted to depict in my sketch is the frames of Kiswah hung in many homes. The kiswah is basically the black silk cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca. Once its time to change the kiswah, ususally parts of it are sold.
My program depicts a mabkhara with a hoat coal in the middle, burning with smoke rising to the top of the screen. Behind the mabkhara is just an image I pasted of the Kiswah that says “بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم ” or “Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem”
Code I am Proud of:
function updateSmoke() {
noStroke();
for (let i = smokeParticles.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
//backward for loop where we decrememnt backwards, this is because we want to kill the oldest particles first then the newer ones
let p = smokeParticles[i];
//p is just there two know which particle we are currently working on
p.y -=5; //move particles up by decrementing y value
p.age+=1; //increase the age
fill(200, 200, 200, p.alpha * (1 - p.age / p.life));
//coloring logic: the closer the age gets tot he life, this means that we want the particle to die off, so it would be a value/ over the same values , ultimately 1-1, which is zero, so the particle wont shpw anymore
ellipse(p.x, p.y, p.size);
//draw the smoke particle at the random x y position
if (p.age > p.life) { //if age is greater than life, then splice the particle
smokeParticles.splice(i, 1);
}
}
}
Sketch:
https://editor.p5js.org/ea2749/sketches/CBpMgmTff
Reflection and ideas for future work or improvements:
In the future I plan to hopefully start using more classes as it makes referencing so much easier and makes the process of editing certain parameters much simpler because everything is contained in a class. For future work I also plan to integrate sounds tot he skecth, for instance, which this sketch the sounds of burning wood would be very fitting!
Reading Reflection:
How are you planning to incorporate random elements into your work? Where do you feel is the optimum balance between total randomness and complete control?
I find it interesting how Casey Reas talks about order before he mentions randomness. Reas discusses how everything started with order and was associated with power in historic times. I specifically liked the part where, towards the end of the video, Reas showed art that depicted “parametrization” more than randomness, and he emphasized how much we can pay attention to detail, even when it looks underwhelming, when there is no randomness. But as Reas shows the pieces, we notice that there is randomness, though it does not overpower the overall structure of the art. This made me reflect on how we can balance structure/control and randomness. After looking at the last few pieces he showed, I found that the best balance is not when one overpowers the other, but when one complements or completes the other. With that in mind, I hope that for the next p5 sketches I work on, I focus more on how randomness can complement structure and parametrization rather than overpower it.
