The Generative Yin-Yang
A Procedural Way to Think and Present The Yin-Yang of Chinese Culture
/ 2022 / Individual Project
Haixu He
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What Does Yin-Yang Mean?
The yin-yang is a conceptual word from Chinese Daoism. It represents two opposing forces, such as black and white, cold and hot, etc., used to describe the balance of everything in the universe. In Daoism philosophy, balance and moderation are essential expressions of yin and yang. The moderation Way believes that people should seek inner peace and soul tranquillity to gain the true value and meaning of life. The balance of yin and yang is then the critical factor, as yin and yang are interdependent and transform each other.
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Visualization Journey
This is a creative programming project about the concept of yin and yang in traditional Chinese Taoist culture. By using OpenFreamworks to generate moving particles, I visually bring the abstract idea of yin and yang to life, bringing a new experience of this traditional idea to contemporary people. You could find a unique order of these randomly moving particles, which brings about a sense of emotional relaxation. In this way, I hope to make people rethink the traditional cultural concept of yin and yang in the current technological age and try to create a culture representation of yin-yang under today’s social occasion by incorporating programming tools.
The use of programming technology allows the abstract term Yin and Yang to be presented more vividly and interactively. By guiding the continuous movement of particles, the balance and transformation between the two forces of yin and yang are presented, demonstrating the core connotations of yin and yang.
This interaction provides a new and creative way to experience the concept of yin and yang more sincerely. This novel way of presenting traditional culture is particularly popular with the younger generation, those interested in both technology and traditional culture, offering them a new way of getting to know traditional culture through modern means.
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Technical Implementation
For the programming part of this project, I chose the code source file of the agent system, which I was more familiar with and confident about after my studies, as the base code on which to develop and change. I started by tweaking the physical attribute of the code, removing the gravity property from the original code and comparing a series of parameters for the specific friction and speed limits values, eventually debugging the code to a silky smooth state. This parameter plays a crucial role in whether the particles can form order autonomously during their movement.
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After completing the programming theme, I wanted to find a way to present a motion graphic display that would be interactive with people, rather than just playing a video on a device. In the end, I decided to convert the programming result into flipbooks, so people could animate the graphic by playing the books in their won way.
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Reflection and Future Development
If I have the opportunity to continue to develop the project, I would like to continue to amplify the interaction between the human and the code result in some way. Possibly by way of camera sensors that track the movement of the human body and thus produce changes due to the guided particle system. These options may involve knowledge of how to connect external devices and some hardware, which is something I do not currently have.
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