Bjork

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An army of Construction - the new and improved version!

Intro

Keeping the idea of microscopic nanobots, this project still work around the idea of constructing a kind global structure by harvesting a local intelligence. Different from my first idea, I expect this scenario to produce a more random result, depending more on the given Agents script that previous. I also found inspiration from existing phenomena, such as lighting and (of cause) swarming creatures.

Step 1

When electrical tension builds up between the sky and the ground, numerous “test” lighting fills the air. Those are not the one we se, but merely gives way for a trial and error approached. I bit like water, the electrical energy has the ability to find the shortest route between two places. The “test” lightings gives a range of choices, the most efficient of those become a real lighting strike. By transforming the air particles into plasma, an electrical pathway is drawn, and a construction of power is created. This script seeks inspiration in this mechanism, but replaces the (almost) infinite amount of air particles, with lesser amount of agents. Though small in number, the agents follow rules fare more complex than air particles, so would expect the outcome to be different yet similar that lighting.

Step 2

Creating lighting structure instead of just drawing the closest line between two areas/point, has to with relation of a local and global forces.

Scenario

1. An emitter creates agents. It would be best if the emitter not only creates agents, but gives them a starting direction.

2. Agents swarm. Move much like bees swarms or like wise

3. If an agent is too close to a Pole, a connection is made between the pole and the agent. This will destroy the agent, making it part of a connection structure.

4. If an agent is too close to a connection structure, it will make a new joint on the structure, thereby enlarging the structure by sacrificing itself.

5. The connection will be stored for export/import in another 3D program.

Thoughts.

There will be lines/connections from the poles continuously. These line will be thin and should indicate they a only attempts for the important connection. The important connection will be the ones from the pole to the ground. The fulfilled connections will have the characteristic of construction, since the will connect to the ground, but I expect the unfulfilled attempts might prove to be equally interesting (if not more?).

Processing

Existing features

1. Seperation

2. Alignment

3. Cohesion

New features

1. Change direction when hit/close to “ground”

2.

Ground

1. A line to define a ground.

Emitter

1. A gizmo that controls where the Agents is born

Poles

An army of Construction old version

Idea:

I once read that one day we will be able to harvest the workforce of millions of “Nanobots” carrying microscopic chunks of building materials. What an amazing thought; an unbelievable world of details and complexity just waiting to be challenged by the twisted mind of future architects. But, how would you draw a project with these Nanobots without having to draw millions of drawings? How to canalize the labor and local expertise of these hardworking creatures? Well these (with a bunch of others) question, will properly not be answered at all in the following, but at least you know what chain of thoughts started this project.

 

Idea (ver. 2 – a bit more hands on)

Populate a 3D [Cartesian] space with agents. These agents can walk, jump but not fly (at least not in the first version of the script). Every agent is a potential building materiel. In processing-world it means that that move around until they for some reason or another is activated as “building material” and then they freeze. The agent will literally become graphic and a new agent will be created. The Cartesian space will also be inhabited by geometries' that affect the agent. Much like obstacles and attractors these geometries will serve as guidelines for the agent's movements and thus serve as guideline for the resulting structure.

 

== Pseudo code ==

The Agent:

(1) The type of information the agents carries:

(2) Material information. Or more correct, the agent is the material. Once deployed it will vanish.

(3) Logic of the agent (in order of execution)

(3a) Search for nearby points of interest

(3a-i) Construction points

(3a-ii) Lines of interest

(3a-iii) Lines of dependency

(3b) Search for nearby agents (don´t know why, but seems important)

(3c) Decide if it should activate a jump our not

(3d) Calculate move

(3e) Deposit material (if activated)

(3f) Vanish (if it deposited)

 

(4) Agent, movement and orientation

(4a) It should have a variable range between crawl/jump/fly. I can´t foresee what will work best, so it just have to be played out.

(4a-i) Version one: There is a constraint on the influence z-axis movement of each agent. Thus the agent will go from flying to crippled flying

(4a-ii) Version two: It does not fly, but jump. The actual z-axis movement needs to be separated from the x & y movement, so that it can follow a more sinus shaped pattern

(4b) The agents movement will be based on its prior steps, nearby materiel and points of interest.

Material

(1)  Material cannot fly; it must always be placed on top of existing material.

(2)  Is material a pixel, a simple geometry or a networks of lines

General Rules (loose ideas)

(1) Certain point/areas can take pull forces

(2) Certain point/areas can take push forces

(3) There will be lines of interest. The agents will react to these lines like:

(3a) They can be attracted to these lines, but deposit no material

(3b) They can be attracted to these line and deposit material.

(3b) They can be repelled by these lines

(4) There will be lines of dependency. The agents will react to these lines as

(4a) They can follow these lines, but deposit no material

(4b) They can follow these line and deposit material.

(4c) They can follow these lines