Big Weather seems to chase our family... /  by Charles Wiese

Last year, Hurricane Harvey had its way with our home. It has been a bit over a year and we just now will begin the repair process… and there are still challenges with insurance.

Now, we have family members and friends in the path of (now) Hurricane Florence. If current projections hold, my son will be fending off up to 30” of rain.

Sincerely - best wishes for strength to all. Floods are not forgiving. I’ve been in Houston for over 25 years now and come to know tropical storms are real threats. Good luck.

Immediately after the floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey receded, our back porch, garage, and yard were filled with items we couldn’t save and were hastily documented. Wet leather seems to be something truly provocative to the microscopic community - something new is growing into these shoes.

One more image based on a photograph taken during post-flood cleanup. So many helped us with HH, and no matter how many thanks are offered, it can never be enough to match the generosity of body and spirit of those who came to our aid.

Further thanks, gratitude, and acknowledgements to other organizations that have provided vital assistance. They include the Jewish Family Service, the Harvey Arts Recovery Fund, the Red Cross, and FEMA.

Sound check... /  by Charles Wiese

Just an experiment to see how the audio player works on my website.

This is a bit of audio produced a while ago with my modular synthesizer. Depending on how the website handles the audio files, I hope to share some of the audio I've been making over that past few years.

Ok... this works. I found the mp3 converter for Audacity and I'm good to go.

The tracks in this post are raw, live takes. No mastering or post. Just what I’ve been doing with audio is for other posts. For the present, consider them snippets - a brief record of my explorations of the sonic landscape in my possession.

This next one has sort of a jazzy, melancholy feel to it, done with a Ciat Lonbarde DeerCocoDeer version of the Cocoquantus and a few notes tapped out (starting about halfway through) on a Chapman stick. Check it out.

The Sky has been filled with clouds... /  by Charles Wiese

Beautiful skyscapes here in Houston this past week. It's fun to watch such giant forms drift across the blue.

So, here is an image from a while back that addresses some aspects of the floating form.

A simple modeled form, textured, lit, and rendered in Modo. One of the benefits of working with a good 3D program is the incredible array of image outputs one can generate.

Sometimes I work on problems... /  by Charles Wiese

And sometimes problems work on me. Today's featured image was made after Hurricane Harvey had flooded our home in Houston.

The original 3D modelled scene consisted of displacement mapped planes, 3D modelled trees and terrain. The foreground elements were then further textured with NPR (non-photographic renderer) texturing routine in Modo.

Something Different... /  by Charles Wiese

I was playing around with Mischief a while back. It is (was?) a marvelous bit of drawing software with an infinite canvas and infinite zoom. It worked well with a Wacom tablet - a necessity for this kind of software.

This combines drawn components with a landscape terrain flow map.

And here is a view of a couple of details "full size".

One more that followed...

Tonight my url transferred... /  by Charles Wiese

It is official now, I've ported my website (in part) to this new platform. The core content is in place (including some not-seen-before images), but some things are missing. That will be taken care of shortly.

In commemoration, I'm showing a raw render of a recently made landscape, see below.

Recently, I've returned to an old interest of landscape creation. Hardware and software speeds have improved enough that the kind of work I wish to make becomes possible on the budget I want to devote to it.

The softwares that I use for making this landscape require the creation of a nodal network. Using fundamental blocks - such as generators, filters, math operators, pixel mappers and others - to create a web of nodes that produces such an intriguing visual image is a surprisingly pleasant abstraction.

The typical generator makes use of some form of multi-fractal noise function. I mention this as a noteworthy connection to the work I've exhibited (see projects such as foldedSpace and ifs).

The above landscape is textured, illuminated, and rendered in Modo.