Co-created with Bosung Kim
When Bosung and I first met we quickly converged on the idea of trying to convey the feeling of water through pixel manipulation. We sought to recreate the visual of water ripples from a drop and got inspired by a YouTube video that used an equation to visualize the z-axis of a circular wave pattern as a function of time and space (unfortunately, I lost the link to the video):
Once we figured out the mechanics of the equation we were mesmerized by the pattern. But the question remained: what in the image to do we actually have to change to create a color ripple effect? After some experimentation we ended up remapping the z-values from the equation onto the color range (0-255) and assigning the few values within the raindrop radius to either R, G, or B values of the pixels (randomly chosen). We also varied the radius of the waves for each drop.
Ultimately, our work uses the color rain to give new life to an existing image: a desaturated desert, void of water and color.
After several minutes of color rain, the desert takes on a new life:
The full experience can be found here [link].
The three words that we think describe the image are: contrast, tranquility, and mesmerizing.
Attribution: The desert image was taken by Santiago Manuel De la Colina, and accessed on pexels.com. The music is from …