Analyzing

Jeremy Hodge
Analyzing
http://www.natzke.com/

After playing with the project for sometime, if becomes obvious that the product itself responds to mouse over commands. Such as simply sliding the mouse across the screen, not needed to press. Yet, the project itself begin with an on(Press) command, what follows after can either follow its own pre-set path, or be overridden by the mouse. When a path is made, either by the program or the mouse, several movie clips spawn in that location. They proceed to duplicate over and over again to create complex designs. There are so many different movie clips you can play with the product for several minutes and see all sorts of different kind of patterns emerge.

Every movie clip is made up of several instances that are set to their own path. Each frame creates a new instance, which in the end makes a ribbon effect just by constantly layering the same shape one after another. The instances do not vanish when the movie clip completes either. Staying on the stage, many thousands of instances begin to layer up creating a virtual painting that will never be the same twice. The more you play with it, the more the painting changes and evolves even though the same movie clips may repeat over and over again.

Spawning a movie clip upon mouse over command is a technique I’ve yet to master myself, but it certainly has a lot of power. It’s a very simple project, but an effective tool for creating interactive web art that is as static and brief as the time in which the user has to offer to it. So ultimately, a solid product.