Playing and research overlap. Getting in the flow is important to my art practice (Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.) . My research methodology leads to discoveries and innovations which otherwise may take longer to reveal themselves if play (and the Flow) were not involved.
Getting a basic working knowledge of complex openVDB software such as Ember by JangaFX or Houdini (SideFX), is frustrating. The software is deep and there is a steep learning curve associated with it. I took another of my exisiting 3D models. (Rock) and in an attempt to make it a cloud I made it catch fire.
I turned off the fire and it left the smoke.
The rock looked like it was steaming. It looked hot.
So I put the steaming rock back into the landscape.
It makes me think about global warming. It makes me think about how it got there. It makes me think of time. None of this was expected, but all of these things are important to me. I am reconsidering the rock because of the research, because it was digitized and re-explored in a digitally mediate d form.
