Dynamic Subspace

Category: Art

  • Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery

    Sophie Calle installation of "Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery," 2017. A obelisk with a box with a slot for paper beneath it.

    Y and I have walked pasted the hill where this monument is more times than we can count since moving next door to Green-Wood Cemetery two years ago, but we never looked at Sophie Calle’s 2017 art installation closely until a few days ago. It’s an obelisk inscribed with the words, “Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green-Wood Cemetery.” Beneath the obelisk is a stone box with a slot big enough to slide an envelope through. The idea is for visitors to write secrets on a piece of paper and then slide them into the slot. We could see through the slot that the box was full of papers, full of secrets. Information about the installation is here, and where it is located in the cemetery can be found on Google Maps here.

  • Where Does the Tiny Door Lead?

    Exterior of a building with a human-sized door on the left and a fairy door on the right.

    I saw this mysterious fairy door next to a normal sized door in Brooklyn awhile back.

  • Evolvotron, a User-Guided Fractal Image Generator

    Evolvotron main window on Debian 12 xfce with Haiku-Alpha window theme.

    As I wrote about KPT Bryce in July 2023, there are image generating programs that use fractal geometry instead of artificial intelligence (AI).

    Another such image generator program is Evolvotron. It can generate fractal-based images with different patterns, colors, and shapes.

    It has an interactive interface driven by user choices in response to a field of different images–each generated from a different set of parameters. Based on this initial field of images, the user can choose File > Reset (or press R on the keyboard) to generate a new field of images.

    Evolvotron main window, right-click menu activated on an image on Debian 12 xfce with Haiku-Alpha window theme.

    When one of these images is one that the user likes or would like to explore more, they can right click and choose to Respawn (just the one square), Spawn (generate images with adjacent parameters), Spawn recoloured (same originating parameters but different colors), and other functions such as Spawn warped (below), Enlarge (below), and Save.

    Evolvotron main window with right-click menu > Spawn warped on Debian 12 xfce with Haiku-Alpha window theme.
    Evolvotron main window with right-click menu > Enlarge on Debian 12 xfce with Haiku-Alpha window theme.

    Below are a few images at 1024 x 1024 that I generated with Evolvotron.

    Image generated with Evolvotron at 1024 x 1024
    Image generated with Evolvotron at 1024 x 1024
    Image generated with Evolvotron at 1024 x 1024
    Image generated with Evolvotron at 1024 x 1024

    I installed Evolvotron from the Debian 12 repositories. It can also be downloaded for various Linux distributions here, and it is available for MacOS X via Fink.

  • Silent Side Street at Night During the First Year of COVID

    an empty side street between residential properties at night during the first half of 2020

    Y and I go for evening walks after dinner. I took the photo above on one such walk during June of 2020. The city was relatively quiet during the day, but it was even more so at night. This is a one-way side street between Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. Residences–some might have once been stables–are on the right side and the back of neighboring residences are on the left. In the background on the left side is a small park.

  • Tiny Origami Cranes

    tiny origami cranes on the lid handle of a small pot closeup

    Y and I received these tiny paper origami cranes from a fellow Postcrosser a few years back. They neatly fit on top of the lid handle of a small pot.

    tiny origami cranes on the lid handle of a small pot