Weekly Journal 04

Exploration & Experimentation

This week we looked more at “the machine,” and I immediately interpreted that as: I am a florist with a computer science degree-in-progress, so obviously I should make a generative flower machine. Logical. I built an interactive flower sketch as a base, then decided to evolve it into a flower-person because my brain loves chaos and character design apparently.

In the flower-person sketch, I added cursor mechanics so I could “add petals,” and clicking changed skirt colors. I had to control where things went, otherwise it became a flower explosion. I tried setting a maximum number of petals and experimented with how they should spread when the head area got crowded. I also fought with positioning and consistent scale, especially since the legs looked fine in the editor but got distorted in my website previews. At that point I declared it an “artistic choice,” because if the universe can be a hustler, so can I.

Image: Interactive flower field. Click for flowers to appear, move to simulate physics

Image: Flower-person sketch with petal skirt and changeable interactivity

Influences & References

Here is the link to the inspiration image for the petal skirt concept (because yes, I absolutely needed a visual target):

This reference mattered because it gave me a silhouette to code toward. Generative systems can spiral into randomness fast, so having a clear “this is what it should read as” helped me constrain decisions. Also, flowers are basically nature’s version of pattern systems, and the more I worked with them, the more I kept thinking about cycles: blooming, fading, returning.

Algorithmic Thinking

The logic was an accumulator with constraints. Each time the interaction triggers, a new petal is placed according to a rule (often based on angle around a center). If too many petals stack in one area, the system nudges placement so they spread out, like “if petals > X, shift the next one sideways.” Clicking on the skirt checks a region (distance or bounding box logic) and then changes skirtColor to the next palette value. My machine imaginaire is like a dressmaker-bot: it keeps adding colours, but it still has to keep the form readable.

Critical Reflection

What worked: mixing my past (love for flowers) with my present (coding experience) made the work feel personal instead of purely technical.

What failed: proportion consistency across contexts. That leg distortion taught me that generative art is also about robustness, what happens when the same rules are displayed somewhere else.

Next step: I want more controlled parameters and smoother transitions, because I can feel myself moving away from “add more stuff” and toward “shift between states.”

Question: What is the meaning of life? = Photosynthesis.

All jokes aside. My question is more: How will my skills improve?