Very recently I was involved in writing Processing program, that was supposed to generate graphics for front cover of ‘Grafik’ magazine. Actually, the program was used on entire issue, producing vector fields from page context – images and text blocks, but most interesting part is dynamic flow.
In this collaboration with computational designer Jonathan Rabagliati, we overlayed particle system on top of generated vector field, creating network of ‘flows’, moving through page context. Some of the agents, in dense neighbourhoods start releasing ‘trails’ wandering through screen, omitting obstacles and trying to find their best way.
Process is illustrated in this video :
result may be seen on the cover of June 2009 issue.