Okay, well, I finally got this ready to go. Combined, they rendered most of the night.
I really wish I could print these out. Unfortunately, our 5-year-old HP Deskjet 1200C (which we bought in 1996 when my grandparents gave us a brand-new 90MHz Pentium with a 1GB hard drive — whooee!) is starting to show its age for photograph printing. Up until a year or so ago, it was running neck-and-neck with the state-of-the-art. However, 1400dpi printers are the norm, whupping our 300dpi absolute max… or at least the printer itself supports 300dpi, but HP doesn't have drivers for it past Windows 3.1, and the Microsoft-supplied drivers stink, crosshatching instead of dithering or dithering nastily. In short, not a pretty situation for a graphics guy — and this is why I don't want to print it out. (My dog broke the printer… honest! 😉 I apologize… it's almost 11pm. and I'm rambling.
Let me cut to the chase: Here are the final aestheometry images I'm turning in… the ones marked "Star of Harvest" and "Seawheel"
(I'm afraid the actuality behind my "evocative" titles may not live up to your expectations… aestheometry, while intriguing in a mathematical and occasionally artistic way, can't compare to a painting or a song in terms of general emotional involvement. "Seawheel" comes closest, to my mind — it's among the most "organic" aestheometry I've seen, partly due to its apparent complexity. Still, I find myself thinking I'm "short-changing" such a marvelous title by using it on this aestheometry. And yet I like "Seawheel" enough to consider using it as one element of the banner at the top of this page, whenever I get around to designing some actual graphics for it. I can always reuse the title, too. Sigh… your mileage may vary.)
Actually, "Seawheel" reminds me of the "cherubim" on the cover of the paperback edition of Madeline L'Engle's A Wind in the Door, the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time.
I just looked over what I typed… so much for cutting to some mythical chase, eh?
Anyway, here they are:
"Star of Harvest"
First Trial Run [local, .png]
Second Trial — not final, but cool!
"Star of Harvest"
Tartan — just for the heck of it
Close-up — shows construction
"Seawheel"
First Trial — ignores "precedence"
w/ Precedence
"Seawheel"
I got tired of the standard black background on "Star of Harvest," so I changed it to white. It adds something; I'm not sure just what. Maybe white doesn't go with the idea of "star"… thankfully aestheometry is generally abstract and nonrepresentational.
I'm really pleased with the way the random-coloring algorithm worked for "Seawheel" — that combined with the visual effect makes it my favorite, hands down.
I probably won't post the source for the final versions on the web, since I'm going to have trouble keeping my webpage under the 10MB limit our ISP sets just with what I've got on here now. If the links don't work after Monday or so, that's why.
And on that note… GOODNIGHT. [written 23:34 CST]
