Category Archives: Thoughts

It is our Will to make Art

This is the beginning of an art project that my partner, AG, and I are developing. This is our first such project together. We are pushing our creative mindset forward to discover how far we can get together, and how fun it can be.

The idea of this piece was to imprint our desire upon our bodies, so it may manifest in reality.
We took our desire:
“It is our Will to make Art”
and put it through the Sigilizer, resulting in:
“ROMEWA LUSTIK”
Then we took the imagery generated by the Sigilizer meditation and projected it over our bodies.

Interestingly, this piece of magical work is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since its charging act resulted in its own success. But we do not intend to stop here. It is still our Will to make Art.

Untouchable Chaos – The closer, the weirder

I’ve been feeding this idea for a while: How can I visually express that feeling emerging from meditations on the essence of things? Mostly, on the essence of the ultimate freedom symbol, the Chaos Star. That feeling of weirdness, of “untouchability”, making you realize that, in fact, essence is pure void. Emptiness. And that knowing something is changing something.

The “Untouchable Chaos – The closer, the weirder” experiment is a possible answer for that.
(needs Google Chrome browser)

For now, it is an web experiment, but the final idea is to create an real world installation, like shown in the picture below, when the right opportunity comes (anyone interested in supporting it ?).

untouchableChaosDraft

The installation project

The “distance measurers” can be the cheap Bare Conductive paints and boards: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/863853574/touch-board-interactivity-everywhere
They would send the user distance to computers. With that data, a computer can provoke the visual distortions on the “huge LED TV screen”, as well on the “colorful led lights” and, most important, activate the lowpass sound filter into deeper and deeper levels. “Powerful lower frequency speakers” would be able to play those levels of filter and cause a very intense feeling of weirdness as the user gets closer to the screen, till the point of complete awkwardness, with lights in 100% bright mode. If you use good earphones you can feel a bit of it on the web version.

Technology playground:

Besides expressing some thoughts, the experiment was a way to study new web technologies.

The chaos star rendering heavily relies on the amazing PixiJS framework. It uses WebGL and enables those crazy filters with powerful performance. I’ve been developing this experiment since version 1.3 and the final version used here, 2.0, is REALLY fast. My first approach was to draw the star and use it to mask some bitmaps, but anti-alias for WebGL graphics is poorly supported among browsers. After months (literally) fighting with that, one simple idea just came up: draw the chaos star inversely, render its texture to get a smooth and beautiful bitmap and put it on top of everything. The visual effect is the same, but we don’t need any masking, anti-alias is smooth as possible and performance is better. Win.

I went further with my drawing chaos stars algorithms started with the Generator and now they can achieve less simetric shapes, with different arrow sizes.

WebAudio API was another field to play. Really cool new features emerging on browsers, but unfortunately each browser renders sounds on its own way. This is the reason why I choose to make it a “Google Chrome only” website.

Another thing I’ve implemented was a Socket connection. Right click to get the QR Code, scan with your phone and slide your fingers on your phone screen to replace the mouse distance measurement. My first experience with NodeJS and Socket.io. Really cool stuff.

Screenshot 2014-07-17 18.20.42

Right click to get the QR Code, scan with your phone and slide your fingers

Leap Motion was one of my first thoughts of simple measure distance, but it is made for short distances, so not very useful here. But the nice thing of it is that it has easy Javascript connectors. So if you have a Leap Motion, you can play with it distorting the star (take a look on the GIF below). The Kinect was never an option because it is “too much”, when we just need information about the user distance. And besides that, connecting it with Javascript is completely cumbersome.

goChaosStar

Leap Motion proof of concept

Didgeridoo performed by Jimmie P Rodgers, recorded with a Zoom H2 at various Mic Gain levels. Permission to play under CC0 has been gracefully given by the artist.

See it live. Click here.

The Sigilizer

AppleAppStore Available_GooglePlay_Button

I’ve just released a new magickal tool: The Sigilizer. Below follows the explanation presented within the app:

Sigilization is a magickal technique that involves redesigning a desire mantric or pictorially and charge it in a state of Gnosis, so that the created symbol can access the almighty “Subconscious”, able to make that wish come true.

There are several ways to create a sigil, but the methodology used by the Sigilizer to create mantric sigils was made popular by Austin Osman Spare and consists of 3 steps:

1 – Declare an intent:

Ex: It is our will to create sigils.

ps: It is said that beginning with “It is my/our will” is more efficient.

2 – Eliminate all repeated letters, accents and points:

It is our will to create sigils

We get:

I T S O U R W L C E A G

3 – Arrange the letters to find a pronounceable mantra:

Ex: OGITAL ERCUWS or TESAGO CURILW

This technique has proven to be efficient and is very popular among Chaos Magicians. However, this process can be bureaucratic and boring, when in fact the most important part is the state of gnosis and charging the sigil.

At this point the Sigilizer comes in. The application creates mantric sigils automagically from intents input by you. And not only one sigil, but several possible variations. The script will always search for the more pronounceable mantras moving vowels to separate consonants.

Moreover, the Sigilizer is a collective project that aims to understand what magicians are desiring. Each input intent is saved (anonymously!!) in a database (Only at the web app. The app inside Google Play and App Store don’t keep anything.). The idea is that over time we have a “Desiring Panel” to be presented at art instalations and related.

And besides generating sigils, the app offers a simple meditation to charge it. Input your will, sigilize it and click at “can we offer a meditation to charge it?” to have a small trip (Only available on the desktop version.). Below follows the explanation about it:

This is a simple meditation that uses the Sigilizer to generate several sigils in accordance with the desire you have input. Each generated sigil will be “spoken” by the application at the same time that the letters forming the sigil will be drawn in motion in the background. The idea is that you sit in a meditative posture and try to empty your mind to “receive” impressions of this visualization. The total time that the sigils are spoken is about 15 minutes, but you can and should look to the screen for as long as you feel necessary. Experience suggests that the use of strong doses of hashish dramatically empowers this meditation.

And a tool for Guerrila Magick – A mobile Sigilizer

Screen_Shot_2013-12-27_at_9 (5)

Since the main goal of the Sigilizer is avoiding boringness and bureaucracy within magick, a mobile version was needed to allow the use of sigils at “runtime” situations. Open the Sigilizer on your phone and banm! A mobile version of the tool, optimized for it, will be presented and you can generate sigils for anything at anytime. “It is my will to receive my pizza Eventually.”, anyone?

And more, after opening it for the first time, your phone will save it and you can use it offline, even in the jungle!

The Sigilizer is now available on both App Store and Google Play. Much easier and with full screen mode support.

PS: The core engine of the app is on Github (https://github.com/caostar/sigilizer) under the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License (WTFPL).

The geometry of chaos and the Chaos Mudra

There are 2 main symbols of Chaos: the Chaos Star and the Chaos Sphere. Both meaning the same, one in a bi-dimensional space and another in 3D. While the first is defined as “eight arrows in a radial pattern”, the second can be described almost the same way: “eight arrows in a three-dimensional radial pattern”.

As I’ve said before, I keep tripping about these symbols. All my meditations take me, at some point, to visualize them with more and more details. It is kind of an obsession. A powerful magickal obsession. How to build them? What are their properties? I feel that the deeper I go into it, the more I manage to put my mind state into a “chaos frequency”. I am not talking about ideological concepts of chaos, but about a state of consciousness where EVERYTHING is possible. The Chaos Star/Sphere has shown itself to me as the ultimate sigil for freeing the mind. Do not talk about freedom. Do not think about freedom. Charge the chaos symbol into yourself till it changes you.

And what does it hide? As anyone looking at something for ages, I started to see “things” into it. Mostly its hidden geometries providing numbers with power, giving me hints on how to proceed with my rituals.

The Chaos Star is easy. 8 arrows equally distributed in 360°. Divided by 8, it gives us 45° separating each arrow. Everybody knows that 45° is a special angle. We can go on and see 8 triangles and an outer circle. But I did not trip about it. Yet.

caostar45

For now, lets jump to the Chaos Sphere and see a myriad of things emerge.

The arrows in a chaos sphere are the space diagonals of a perfect cube. The edges of this cube guarantees that all arrows will be separated by the same distance, since all edges share the same size. And how do I get the angles of these space diagonals? Well, I am terrible with math, but after some days refreshing my trigonometry skills, I finally got it.

magicAngle

For my surprise, what define the base of rotations of the chaos sphere’s arrows is the Magic Angle. Yeah, indeed: 54.735610317° is considered magic by regular science and medicine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_angle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_angle_(EELS)

Of course the Magic Angle is not alone.
We have its opposite: 35.264389682° (could us call it the “Dark Magic Angle”?),
Its double: 109.471220634° (The angle between 2 of the chaos sphere’s arrows),
Its opposite double: 70.528779365° (The opposite angle between 2 of the chaos sphere’s arrows).

They can be simple numbers or, under the correct paradigm, can be quite powerful. Personally, I finally found a justification for a mudra that come to me almost every time I got into a very deep meditation state. My hand go to my face, and my fingers make an especial angle, the angle between 2 of the chaos sphere’s arrows. I never knew before why I was doing this. But it is because the Chaos Sphere’s arrows were entering in my head, my body, my soul. From now on, I call it the Chaos Mudra.

chaosmudra

And together with that, I have now all the data I need to generate a Chaos Sphere 100% by code. See it here. This is the first step for the Chaos Sphere Generator.

Screen Shot 2013-04-26 at 5.49.06 PM

The Chaos Star Generator

Since I got involved with Chaos Magick, the Chaos Star symbol got stuck in my mind. It is so beautiful and full of meanings. Freedom beyond imagination. Eight directions signifying all possibilities, “including before conceiving”, as A.O.S would say.

After hundreds of meditations visualizing and several epiphanies with it, I started to see Chaos Stars everywhere. Remember the greek concept that “it is all made of triangles”? What about “it is all made of chaos stars”? Each particle, unity of materia, being an all-possible-including-possibility chaos star, just waiting for perception to manifest one of its possibilities in the “real world”.  That is how I have been tripping on top of the issue. Lots of fun.

And then it got connected with my generative art studies. I have visualized the Chaos Star in gazillion different forms. How can I draw them all in a computer screen? And more: what is a Chaos Star? Wikipedia says: “eight arrows in a radial pattern”. It is a perfect definition for me, since it leaves the field open for infinite abstractions.

So the Chaos Star Generator has born. It is a Javascript web application where you can input parameters to explore the visual possibilities of “eight arrows in a radial pattern”. And, of course, you can get random inspiration clicking on the screen to get one, or a infinite sequence clicking at “Inspire me randomly, please.” You can save the Chaos Star and/or publish it on your Facebook wall.

The proccess of building the app has presented several technical challenges that I will be probably talking in other posts, like publishing from <canvas> to the Facebook wall. I am using some open source stuff from other people, but everything made by me has the WTFPL license. So “Do What The Fuck You Want To” do with it.

Besides being just a beautiful play, it can be a quite useful magickal tool. Try this:

1 – Upload a texture (left controls) with a sigil at the exact center of the bitmap. Like this:texture4
2 – Click at “Inspire me randomly, please.”
3 – Open the controls (top right) and manipulate the “transitionTime” parameter to get your preferred speed.
4 – Get into some gnosis and look at the moving Chaos Star with your sigil at the same time.
5 – Hell yeah. You got it.

Try the Chaos Star Generator.