About the art:
Alappuzha is a generative art created as an ode to my hometown. Alappuzha, is a city in the south of India, with beautiful beaches, backwaters, fields and more. Besides being my birthplace, it has been a place of healing for me - from the darkest of my times to the best of my times, this place has given me everything that has made me the person I am today. The rivulets end their torturous journeys merging with the seas in Alappuzha. The dark fires that burn us slowly, are finally vanquished in the rains of Alappuzha. We find the end meeting a new beginning in the sunsets of Alappuzha. And when all is said and done, we merge with the peace in the quiet starry nights of Alappuzha.
The generative art of Alappuzha was meticulously made over the course of 160+ hours in 1600+ lines of code without using SVGs or any other image formats, i.e. the artwork is a live code-based art rather than an image or animation-video. The art is also a "live" generative art in the sense that it changes based on the physical location of the viewer, time of the day, weather, season etc. The art contains 5 of the most popular locations of Alappuzha which I have found to be places of meditation and contemplation. Based on the viewer's physical location in Alappuzha, the art will change to any one of these locations. There are multiple varying elements within each of the 5 locations like the sun/moon, clouds, trees, rainbows and more. Hence every time the artwork is loaded a unique glimpse of Alappuzha shows up. This artwork also changes colour themes based on time of the day. Depending on the realtime weather, it may or may not rain in the artwork. This artwork is also fully responsive (works beautifully with big and small screen sizes).
Each of the shapes and forms of Alappuzha was crafted using elemental shapes coded by hand rather than using drawing softwares. Multiple algorithms including fractal algorithms, noise, vector fields and more were used to create unique and beautiful animations. The whole artwork - with the different locations, variations, animations and interactivity has been compiled into a single file with a size of just 38kb (In comparison, a generic jpeg file would be at least 100KB.) and uses the P5JS library.
In this time of “distant viewing”, I invite you all to take the journey into this serene and beautiful land through this artwork.
Links:
Alappuzha is minted as a 1/1 NFT in Opensea.
Link to NFT:
View the artwork in fullscreen with location features:
Since you can see the artwork locations only if you are physically present at the particular location in the city of Alappuzha, to make it easy for you to view the complete work at home remotely, I have created an interactive demo of the work. Try it out here:
(Please note this link is only a demo and not the actual artwork.)
Presentation:
Photo by Anantha Krishnan on Unsplash
Preview video:
Interactive Demo
Here is an interactive demo video showing the different locations, time of the day, rains and other variations. This demo is only to show all the different versions. In the actual artwork, each version will be shown based on different parameters like the viewer's location, realtime weather, time etc.
Here are 1024 various scenes of the artwork:
All the above variations have been combined into one single generative artwork. This is being presented as a 1/1 NFT.
Live captures:
The art of Alappuzha exhibited as an Infinite Objects video at my home in Alappuzha:
The different variations of Alappuzha at different locations in Alappuzha:
(The Beach, Finishing point, Mullakkal Temple, Lighthouse, Fields near Nedumudi)
Technical note:
For the location-based actions to work, make sure your browser has access to location services in your phone/computer. For iOS check this link and for Android this link. Also make sure the location is correctly locked - one way to check is to open Google Maps /Apple Maps. If none of these works to lock location, restarting the phone and refreshing the page will help.