My Digiscape Completed (Write Up and Documentation)

Proccess: The Digiscape: “Data Sea”

First Sketch.

My digital landscape is partially inspired by the coordinate plane. I originally toyed with the idea of points that move through space, into and out of the background. I would simulate the idea of moving along Z coordinates by changing the size of the units as they move between points. My sketch for my idea utilized one point perspective, with all points moving from two surfaces, surface A at the top, and surface B below. Units of information would be transported between points, from top to bottom, and vice versa, indicated by lines drawn between the points.

In progress.

This method however proved a bit troublesome when I began working on the final version of my digiscape. For a while this weekend I would try multiple ideas to indicate movement between the two areas while keeping the entire piece visually interesting. I experimented with portals that would open up and transfer particles between each other, with a cell phone tower that would absorb select particles for processing.

One idea for showing transportation of data.

This was a decent idea, but I did not feel that it would accurately define what i wanted to express as my digital landscape. I did however combine this idea with my first to produce my final digiscape.

My final iteration of my digiscape took a more earthly feel, as I decided to create a distinct digital sky and land, composed of lots and lots of data clusters. Each cluster would move from the sky to the land, or vice versa. As it moves between the two, its hue changes to a transparent red, indicating the data being processed before it reaches its destination. Upon reaching its destination, it blends in with the data clusters around it, awaiting transfer again if ever needed. For every starting point, from the top or bottom, there is a destination created on the other end, even if that destination is the same as the starting point. (Have you ever sent an email to yourself before flash drives became prominent?)

I would like to have more red clusters moving between the planes in the animated version.

I am planning a little ahead in this piece and hope to animate each row of clusters, as well as the bits of data moving from one surface to another. Within each in-progress cluster I want to be able to click it, producing an entirely new digiscape, generating a whole new set of transferred clusters that would demonstrate a potentially infinite creation of information.