Introduction

Metropolis is a play on the word "metro(subway)" and "polis" which means "city" in greek. Each of the 6 pieces collection is associated to a subway station from the "Société des Transports de Montréal". This project was made in Javascript with the help of the p5.js library

Why these 6 stations?

It's simply because it's the 6 station I used the most when I was working in downtown Montréal in the late 2000's, about 15 years ago. The top down view suggest an "Heat Map" of the city at those key locations.

The creative process

I came across these interesting visuals during #inktober back in 2020. #genuary did not exist yet and I was clueless about the existence of #codevember. So I used the idea of inktober to explore new idea with the contraint of using only monochrome palettes.

Step I - Everything, Everywhere, All at once.

First thing in the process I was trying to make cool texture that would work well with any project, I had some very cool outputs from this, even though the process is relatively simple. I used noise for the more uniform output and a mix of noise and randomness for the latter.

Step II - Movement

I then explored more with randomness and the intersection between the walker. I especially liked the marbly texture of this output

Step 3 - Constraint

I also loved the fact that the walker agents where constrained so that would create a border when they would touch the outer border

Step 4 - Recursion

I then started to explore recursiveness and playing the the initial variable to create slightly imperfect shape

But then I got this beautiful butterfly with the same technique and no chaos this time

Step 5 - Creating forms

Then I just went wild with these systems, I made a tree in the savannah and a nice brocoli.

Step 6 - Grids

And then the main structure for Metropolis came about, A mix of grid system and recursion.

Step 7 - Montreal

I then decided to combine both outputs from step 6 : the dots in the in the first image of to the line grid system of the second image.

I then added some variability to the brightness of each blocks according to perlin noise and it gave this beautiful topside abstract city grid.

I hope you have enjoyed this quick read full of image!

Jonathan Barbeau (Generative Artist)