--mirror-- is inspired by New York City's evolving skyline and its artistic representations. A couple of years ago, I was particularly struck by Elmgreen & Dragset's "The Hive," an installation of upside-down skyscrapers in the hall of NYC's Penn Station. I've tried to produce images that stand somewhere between figurative representation and abstraction, distorting the shapes of inverted buildings into dream-like apparitions.

/* Saving an output /*

Just press ’s’ on the keyboard to save a 4096 x 4096 image of your minted output. Feel free to contact me if you want an even larger image.

/* Features and variations */

"Grouping" indicates the proximity of the shapes to one another: TIGHT means they're close, while APART signifies more distance between them.

"Filling" refers to the degree of fullness of the drawing - WIRE draws only the outline of each square, WINDOW fills the square but leaves some blank space around it, and FULL mixes both.

"Orientation" is predominantly MIRROR, with shapes anchored at the top. However, occasionally it's NATURAL, with anchor points at the frame's bottom.

"Background" simply denotes the background color.The prevalent one is the dark CATSKILL NIGHT, followed by the lighter UES GREY. A few other colors make sporadic appearances.

/* Colors /*

Rather than using fixed color palettes in this project, I generate most colors randomly, bending or constraining the choices with a few rules. This process allows for unexpected color combinations to appear. Making generative rules for colors rather than predetermined palettes makes more sense to me and allows for a wider (and wilder) variety of outputs.

/* Technical info /*

This project was developed in p5js, the javascript port of Processing.
Color blending is achieved with the help of the mixbox library. That helps in rendering more vivid and saturated colors in the gradients that compose the skycrappers.

When you save an output, the number in the filename is the seed used to generate your particular mint.

/* Conclusion /*

Thanks again for minting and reading!
I hope you had fun discovering your mirror output.
Keep dreaming.

-raphael, Nov. 2023