There was an effect I had been chasing for a long time that was native to MS Paint and Solitaire or glitched Windows UI – this kind of drag repeat pattern. I’d seen 8glitchorbit use it to great effect (I’m not sure if they’re using an app or what) – but it’s as simple as an image that doesn’t get refreshed as it’s dragged around. That sounds super easy until your goal is to code it – and if you’re an utter amateur like myself, it took a while and several false starts to get something working. I spent a lot of hours tinkering with Processing trying to get something that did what I wanted.

When I finally got something that worked, I’m pretty sure I shared the demo screen capture of working-title “img_brush” with half my friends (most of whom were confused why I was so excited). The earliest experiments with this effect were split between trying glitch techniques with the result, and something closer to Fragments series. This collection of experiments is called “vaguely_remembered_vacations” – because I tried the effect with so many scenes and objects that would have previously been outside the scope of what I considered acceptable source material. Some fo those sources were seasides, or pottery, or landscapes or whatever that would have just been too recognizable to fit into an expressionistic mindset. The final results became a series of 4, three of which I considered really good and worthwhile. Looking at them still makes me feel like I’m trying to conjure places I visited as a kid but don’t really recall with any clarity – the colors and patterns are hard to wrestle into an actual place, but feel like things I’ve seen before. This series was hosted on makersplace.