Orbitals is a long-form generative art collection of 208 editions, generated by code that lives on the Ethereum blockchain and the IPFS network. The collection was created with JavaScript and uses the p5js library.
The outputs will be offered for sale on fxhash on Friday 15th December 2023 at 6pm UTC (10am PT / 7pm CET), the mint URL will be shared on my Twitter account (@MrMallory_) around 24 to 48 hours prior to mint.
You can also still join the public raffle via this tweet: https://twitter.com/MrMallory_/status/1727323830891192701
Every mint will be created by using a random hash to seed a random number generator used by the algorithm to make decisions about the colors, intensity, shading, and all other traits. This is done to ensure that every output is random while being unique within the constraints defined for the algorithm.
Orbitals is Visual Serendipity
Orbitals represents the serendipitous collision of events in our lives.
My life is filled with examples of events that felt like major failures at the time I experienced them and were actually setting me up for a larger success a few years down the road. As if seemingly unrelated events came at the same orbit like in a space rendezvous, and unexpectedly aligned and fostered something greater. And every time, the larger patterns became visible to me only once I could take enough perspective on things.
Are those moments pure luck, or are they following a pattern of synchronicities and part of a deeper meaning beyond our understanding? Or is it just that we are creating meaning for the patterns we experience because as human beings, narratives are the only way we can make sense of ourselves?
Now think about the opposite: what about the events in your life that failed to achieve their space rendezvous and ended up as two ships passing in the night. What potentials have been lost to eternity because those events never collided like others did?
Something poetic happened while I was developing the algorithm: I introduced two separate bugs and those two bugs combined made the algorithm produce an emerging ethereal visual which I did not initially predict. In a way, it’s as if the core idea for the collection expressed itself through emergence, and as the artist I was only its vessel.
My starting point for this project was a background rendering for another project, which was made out of concentric circles. This made me want to explore creating an algorithm that would only use circles, and I started connecting this to the idea of space rendezvous, and what I could create by making circles intersect. I wrote more about my journey of creating Orbitals a dedicated Making Of article which you can read at this URL: https://medium.com/@MrMallory/orbitals-the-making-of-827236c7e4ab
And nothing better than circles and their intersections to represent the idea of events colliding. As such, Orbitals is made of circles, and only circles. While I was creating Orbitals, I realized that if you look at a circle close enough, it will look like a straight line. Some of the things you see in Orbitals might look like lines, but just like the events colliding in our lives, only once you take enough perspective will you realize that they were circles all along.
How An Orbitals Edition is Generated
The gallery below shows the six steps through which an Orbitals edition is generated. From left to right, the top row shows steps 1–3, and the bottom row shows steps 4–6. They go as follows:
Step 1: The background of the canvas is filled with the second color, and concentric circles are drawn using the first color. Some of those circles may appear as curved lines, as it is the case here, as this creates a patterns of tilted vertical lines.
Step 2: Shaded circles created, all concentric but with a jitter added to their center position as to create an overlap effect. They are created using a random cloud of points that’s passed through an easing function and which creates the grainy shading effect.
Step 3: The Lens Flare effect is applied, if present, which is the case here.
Step 4: Similar line patterns as in step 1 are added, but with a smaller line width.
Step 5: Another set of concentric circles is created, this time with a very fine width. It is shown here with the almost horizontal thin line pattern.
Step 6: Add the borders as the final touch.
The Traits of Orbitals
The outputs of the Orbitals collection vary across multiple traits. The rest of this article covers them and shows examples as to what they look like.
- First Color
- Second Color
- Intensity
- Spread
- Shader Size
- Glow
- Lens Flare
- Border
IMPORTANT: All the outputs shown in the rest of this article were generated randomly before the collection was minted, and are not part of the Orbitals collection itself. They are only meant to be showcasing the different traits of the collection.
Traits: First and Second Colors
Every output of Orbitals is made with a pair of colors, taken out of 10 possible colors. All colors have the same probability of being selected. The colors are the following: Black, White, Pink, Yellow, Orange, Dark Blue, Pale Blue, Teal, Red, Purple.
This makes for 45 possible pairs of colors, some of which will be vibrant pair, and some on the contrary, will be more contrasted. The gallery below shows what those pairs look like for a given output. Note that Black and White are not represented in this example gallery, although you will find them in the outputs of the collection.
Trait: Intensity
The intensity trait is a number that goes from 1 to 12 and which represents the amount of noise and patterns in the output. This is not an exact measurement, however, you can expect that outputs with lower intensity numbers will be calmer, and outputs will higher intensity numbers will be busier.
The gallery below shows how the intensity trait influences outputs:
- In the first row from left to right, intensity 1 to 4.
- In the second row from left to right, intensity 5 to 8.
- In the third row from left to right, intensity 9 to 12.
Intensities 3–7 are the most frequent (10–15% each), then 1–2 and 8–9 are somewhat frequent (6–8% each), and 10–12 are the rarest (3–4% each).
Trait: Spread
The spread trait controls if the noise patterns will show up on the whole canvas, “Full”, or on part of the canvas, “Partial.” Editions with intensity of 10, 11, and 12 will always have the spread trait set to “Full”.
The trait comes with the following rarity:
- Full: 70%
- Partial: 30%
Trait: Shader Size
The shader size represents the size of the grain used to create the circular patterns. There are three possible shader sizes, small, medium, and large, which are represented from left to right in the gallery below. They come with the following rarity:
- Small: 60%
- Medium: 30%
- Large: 10%
Trait: Glow
The glow trait is boolean, it is either “enabled” or “disabled.” When enabled, it adds a light glowing effect to the foreground line layer. The trait comes with the following rarity:
- Enabled: 15%
- Disabled: 85%
In the images below, the effect is disabled on left and enabled on the right. If you look at the purple diagonal bands, you will see a glow/shadow on their edges.
Trait: Lens Flare
The lens flare trait is boolean, it is either “enabled” or “disabled.” When enabled, it adds a radial grainy effect to the image, as if a bright light source was shining directly into image. The trait comes with the following rarity:
- Enabled: 85%
- Disabled: 15%
In the images below, the effect is disabled on left and enabled on the right.
Trait: Border
The border trait controls the presence of borders around the image. If present, the borders can be of either two colors: “First Color” or “Second Color”, which matches the color assigned in the color traits.
The trait comes with the following rarity:
- First Color: 65%
- Second Color: 30%
- None: 20%
Learn about the creation process of Orbitals
Learn more about the Orbitals generative art collection by reading other articles, find the links below:
