This is the culmination of my collaboration with Lara Laubert. It turns out that Majestic Cat was only a preliminary test for this piece.
Each of Lara’s pen stroke was processed to be outlined and hatched so they would have enough visual weight on such a large scale. The basic “traveling salesman” algorithm I implemented doesn’t discriminate between outlines and hatches, so parts of the drawing look nonsensical until they all come together at the end.
I occasionally would stay near to machine to watch people’s reaction and had a few chats with them too. It’s a real pleasure to see how well received it was. When I took it down 3 students were curious about what I was going to do with the drawing so I offered it to them. It completely made their day and I couldn’t think of a better thing to happen for this drawing.
As always there were several trials and refinements before the public render.
I forgot where I saw this done, but I was finally able to produce something close. The subject is only visible from a distance, getting close quickly dissolves it into something dizzying to look at.
Mandala/Tessellations by Hava Edelstein (as always :)).
Large plastering of UV ink, it looks awesome in person.
I’ve refined my algorithms for processing multiple colors.
I’ve got my next 2 big plots lined up, but I’ll abstain from revealing their test renders until their full size reveal, likely this Fall. Both are collaborations with artists.
Flowers started rolling in, one of Nicole’s most successful crops. After many failed attempts, we finally have an established patch of Lilies of the Valley. It’s incredible how far we can smell it from.
I’ve gotten in touch with Lara Laubert through MandalaGaba when she reported a bug about it. Thank god for bugs, because she’s an extremely talented artist from Brazil, and has great enthusiasm for random cool projects. Inevitably when the big plotter was built, I reached out to see if she’d like to collaborate on getting her art rendered by it, and being the cool person that she is, she was willing to launch into it. I won’t link to her social media, because they’re all walled, I don’t have accounts, and I don’t want to refer to them but she is easily Googlable (something I soon won’t say either seeing as they have been taking steps away from their “don’t be evil” moto, but let’s not turn this into a state of the Internet discussion). Lara is an amazing artist greatly skilled in capturing the natural world. I would say there’s a gift in there too, but I don’t want to take away from the work she must have had to put in to develop her skills.
An so through much back and forth, Majestic Cat was born.
I don’t do much more than run some algorithms and operate the machine, but there’s still a lot of work involved. Including many trials before the public reveal: 6 days in a public place where her art to be drawn by the plotter. I did this to coincide with a public event and it was wonderful to see people’s reactions to it.
There was a slight misalignment about 2/3rd of the way in as was made evident at the return to origin. You wouldn’t really know it’s there unless you looked carefully. I believe someone must have bumped into it at some point and that’s ok, I know it’s a bit of a gamble with many people (and kids) stopping by to see it. Maybe it was an actual issue with the plotter, but I never saw this in thousands of hours of plotting.
I’ve been practicing with a laser, and so of course I lasered Majestic cat. It looks awesome.
From the many trials before the public installation, we have Majestic Cats all over the house now.
And the best part is, this is only our first checkpoint to make sure we could work with each other’s format requirements. Majestic cat is a fraction of something bigger.
I always leave a little something in the stumps of the trees I take. It can’t be too complicated, and curves are reeeeeally hard. They’re all over the place and the kids love finding them, I hope the grand kids will too.
The house is still very unfinished 8½ years in, but it’s also gotten to be incredibly cozy during the cold months. It’s only ever gotten better over the years, while we slowly forgot what a regular house is like. I know we crave wood heat when we go somewhere it’s not used. We just bought a new stove, a real fancy clean burning one and I’m very much looking forward to using it although it’ll be likely at the end of Winter that we finally get it. To get a clean air tax incentive we were asked for a propane bill or electric bill, they’ll have to do without, things are too perfect where they are. It is putting it mildly to say that we were shaped by our living arrangements, in many ways I feel like the transformation we sought years ago is complete.
