In the last three months, from December 2022 until February 2023, I gradually realized that there are various distractions that I often followed and caused disruption to what I should be focusing on. These distractions usually come from within myself as well as external influences. Turns out, many people who I know or who happen to recently know also experiencing the same thing with more or less the same intensity.

Various conversations happened during these months until one day I thought that maybe it is the lack of discipline that could cause this almost never-ending issue. Embracing the mindset of just doing it and focusing on making it done instead of adding more and more unnecessary thoughts during the process. Focusing only on manifesting the thing that felt needed to be manifested and then trying to let it go and let it be as it is. Maintaining consistency and being committed to the first reason why it needs to be done. This might be a thing that everyone should understand in the first place, but I believe that the distinction between generations also has a role in how fast/slow the realization of this context could be solidified.

Discipline might be one of the important aspects to gain the needed self-control to get a hold of the strengthened commitment. This might be false or this might be true, maybe my lack of articulation may gave a confusing conclusion. But I think anyone might experience the difficulties of expressing the feeling that they understood how it felt yet hard to say, and so do I.

"Interpreting the moment of self-control that can occur individually or massively, where interruptions that arise might come from internal and external influences."

As my first attempt at making this piece, I let myself freely code what I felt could be coded on the official page of Hydra live coding visual library and it resulted in this simple sketch below. I tried to follow what possibility could represent the idea of the piece.

After that, I tried to explore more about what could be developed from the first sketch. It turns out to be quite a mess, but then I remind myself of what I tried to achieve in this piece. I decided to let it be for a while before continuing with the shape that I want for this piece.

Later, I moved all the codes into the Atom text editor to start working on the project. I decided to tweak the codes and experiment with some functions in Hydra such as .modulate(), .scale(), and .mult() along with adding the square shape and then playing a bit with the feedback modulation result involving the default output (o0) as the modulation source, for example, .modulate(o0). Some of the results showed the image below and from this progress I continue to develop the visual, polishing the texture and adding more possible visual ornaments.

I still decided to use the square shape since the form felt solid and sturdy as it help me to abstract the existence of the individual who stays still even with various things interrupting. In this square shape, I put the voronoi texture inside it using .mult(voronoi()) so that it becomes its main texture. I also try to add the .thresh() function, in order to make the shape, feel more solid, and also added the .invert() function to revert the color and put darker color to the square shape so that the main focus will be on the shape itself. The image below is one of the results of this attempt.

Later, the next thing that I'm working on was creating the animated ornaments. This time I want to experiment with how to make the visual hidden or show it as part of the variation whenever the piece gets minted. In this case, I tried using the .luma() function and putting the fxrand() as the parameter value. I adjusted it a little bit and one of them was written like this: .luma(0.3+fxrand()).

Later I put the code into each code for the animated ornament visuals so each iteration from the piece now could have its unique ornament variations. One of these ornaments includes some repeated animated squares with semi-solid black colors or spotted shapes. I want to make sure that later during minting, each iteration could still feel strongly related to the idea of this piece.

In the end, the resulting visuals become the representation of "who strongly stays still and what might disrupt it".

I am truly proud and happy with how the resulting texture caused by the subtle feedback modulation felt fit properly with the concept/idea that I want to put in this piece.

Thank you so much for spending some time reading this article. Pardon my lack of articulation with each phrase/paragraph that you might find confusing to understand and even the little information that might not suit your current interest. I just want to share the slight thought that I had in mind for this piece.

You may see the piece itself at the end of this article.

All the best always <3