Weekly observations
What is the pattern? - What is interesting about this pattern? How does it make you feel? - What is the nature of the pattern e.g. repetition, sequence, variation? - How might you make this pattern more perceivable? - How might you recreate this pattern in code?
One thing that came to my mind is this video by Francis Alÿs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtWUqBR1Eww) Cuentos Patrióticos.
In this video, a figure leads a sheep on a leash in circle in a plaza. At every turn around the flagpole another sheep joins in behind the last and follows in its path. Eventually the procession around the pole becomes full-circle, and there is no clear leader.
Then, the procession of sheep gradually dismantles itself one by one, leaving the figure who originally led the sheep, at the end. As the sheep trickle off, the roles are reversed.
When I first watched this video. I found it tiring as it challenged my attention span. But I forced myself to sit through it and watch as the pattern emerged. It became comforting to know what to expect each time. There is a safety or a feeling of heldness in knowing what is next to come, being able to anticipate the next step.
To experiment with it, I downloaded a copy of the video from youtube, and placed it in premiere to speed it up 500% because the file was too big to work with. Then, I uploaded the sped up file to vimeo and linked it in the aerial hudson example sketch in p5.js.
To rework the way the videos were drawn to the screen, I took out the for loop in the draw() function and calculated the dimensions of four squares. I wanted to break the frame into 4 squares, each running with a randomized start location and speed. In this sense, it was an exercise in breaking the pattern.