Retrospect

The process

Retrospect utilizes a 2D rigid-body physics engine for composition. Circular bodies are placed within a scene and the forces of gravity, collision and audience intervention guide them into a stable resting state. The rendering of the system occurs in two parts: While interacting, the bodies are rendered as outlines in a 2D canvas to allow fluid manipulation. Once the system arrives in a stable configuration, a heavier WebGL rendering step applies physically estimated lighting to each body. This rendering occurs in a fragment shader, where the correct combined colour value for each pixel on the canvas is calculated. "Light" projects outward from each body, the sum of which on a body's "surface" is blended to provide a soft final gradation of light and colour. The system is fully responsive and can extend to any viewport size upon interaction. The composition is initially presented in its default 9:16 deterministic state. A print renderer allows any composition to be exported beyond normal HTML canvas limits of 16384px. 100 segments of the artwork are rendered and stitched together into a giant and precisely rendered image file 10x the size of what's displayed on-screen. Controls: - Mouse and Touch enter responsive mode and allow direct interaction with the system - 'S' saves a still at the current resolution - 'P' exports a "print" still at 10x the current resolution - 'C' reveals the minified project source code