This is a generative art project on the LILYGO ESP32 that was installed as hanging displays at Barnard College. I chose to represent the theme of 'transition' using a series of appearing circles!

Given the many technical and administrative difficulties I'd experienced in obtaining a working computer for this project, I ended up with only ~2 hours to create something before this installation. I started off with testing and modifying the built-in code samples to familiarize myself with Arduino. I particularly liked the TFT_Ellipse example, which displays randomly colored and placed ellipses first filled, then outline-only on the screen.

I thought about the theme 'transition' and how it could be emulated using modifications to the code examples in the interest of time. Using TFT_ellipse, I decided I could make circles that expand, fill the screen, and then change the background upon burst like an image transition. I first changed tft.drawEllipse to tft.drawCircle and added a for loop in which a new, larger circle would be drawn continuously, with a black (background color) circle drawn to cover the previous one. However, I soon realized the difficulty of devising a burst animation. I then tried making the circles contract after expansion in a pulsating motion, but also realized the difficulty in making this animation occur at overlapping times for each circle. At this point, my code consisted of making circles appear, expand, and shrink one at a time. I didn't think that made for much of a transition, so I took away the contract functionality (though I left it uncommented in the code). I decided to just have circles that grew, with each ring building on the previous one. Ten of these circles would spawn one at a time at random locations, with randomized colors and radii. Then the screen would clear, aka return to black, and ten new circles would appear, grow, and overlap one another.

By this point, I had exhausted my time before the installation. The growing circles were my final design. Though they do not encapsulate 'transition' how I'd intended, I was satisfied with what I had given the time constraints. In a way, they make me think of different periods of life and the unexpected people that arrive and impact each stage.

I designed the encasing envelope with the intention of matching the semi-abstract, geometric look of the display. I drew the plaid / grid structure to counteract the entirely circular display, but I added elements of roundness so as to not completely deviate. The colors were meant to reflect the general color palette of the display, even though it's randomized; I wanted to create something fun, dynamic, and eye-catching to contrast with the digital black background.

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