Art Starters

What’s a Mondrian?   A Dutch abstract painter.   For best info, Google on Mondrian and ask for images.  I always liked Mondrian’s work, ever since he was discovered by Newsweek and Time (Google on those, too, if you don’t remember them).  I liked his bold colors and defiantly non-representational layouts.    Virtual reality is an inviting place for such art.  So I made a MultiMondrian art piece.  Here is an example:  

Well-known works by Mondrian are built of rectangular areas of different colors.  The basic building blocks in Second Life are cubes.  The dimensions are easily changed to mod the cubes into flat rectangular panels.  I can work with these objects either by “free hand,” with the cursor, or by the numbers for specific dimensions and locations.  So I can size and place objects just as neatly as my old shop teacher wanted me to.     

And I can write simple Scripts in LSL (the native scripting language of Second Life) to set and reset the color of an object.  What’s more, the scripts are guaranteed to not to color outside the lines. 

I wrote several scripts to give various selections of color.  They all make random selections of the three color numbers and then adjust the color numbers to meet particular goals.  One, for example, will only show strong colors.   If the randomly selected color numbers will produce a pastel, the script changes the color to black or white.  There is a setting to control the black/white proportions.  I put that setting in because Mondrian used a lot of white. 

The pictures I am showing here don’t have white areas, meaning I probably took them before I put this feature in the script. 

Art starters and the modlod collection.

The MultiMondrian is included in the Art Starters section of the current Hobo Starter Kit, available at the Visitor Welcome Center on Cookie and at several places on Hobo Island.  This section of the starter kit has several objects (more to come) that might be of interest to artists working in Second Life. 

One of the advantages of designing the kit with enbedded notecards is that I can keep expanding it as we think of more things people need starter help on. 

The Art Starters are part of my modlod collection.  Mod means modify.  LOD means Learn On Demand.  The objects in the modlod collection are free to copy and all the scripts have full permissions to modify and include documentation to help in modification.    The idea is that you start with an object/script combination that does something you want to learn about.  You examine the object and the scripts until you think you understand how they work.  You then make modifications towards what you want to accomplish.   And learn while you modify.  There is additional help for script modding in the Script Modding section of my website. The coloring scripts for the MultiMondrains are also there, but not yet annotated to help with modding them

And Joe the Geek?  What will he do with the MultiMondrian?  Well he does have this ninety-six inch screen on his living room wall.  Facing right out on the street through his big picture window.  It is still connected to his computer, because he doesn’t use it to watch television anymore.  So he can put his MultiMondrian on in the evenings for the neighbors to see.  Gets a lot of attention when the Snootbootys across the street have a wine and brie party to raise money for the local art museum.  He looks forward to the day when one of the art connoisseurs has enough wine to come over and ask where he got the faux Mondrian.  He hasn’t decided on an answer.  But he will probably explain that he works in the wave of the future – computational art.