Psychedelic Graphics 0: Introduction

Hi, David Tristram here. founding member of Raster Masters, 1990's computer graphics performance ensemble. As @hopkins has mentioned, we used high end Silicon Graphics workstations to create synthetic imagery to accompany live music, including notably the Grateful Dead, Herbie Hancock, and Graham Nash.

After many iterations I'm currently working mainly in 2D video processing environments, Resolume Avenue and TouchDesigner. The links here are inspiring, thanks for posting.

If anyone wants to play around with psychedelic graphics without going too low-level, [hydra](https://hydra.ojack.xyz/) is a cool javascript based livecoding environment with a gentle learning curve.

Regarding the OP doc and UV coordinates. A major area of investigation for us back in the day was finding interesting ways to displace the uv texture coordinates for each corner of the rectangular mesh. We used per-vertex colors, these days one would use a fragment (pixel) shader like those in ShaderToy.

A very interesting process displaces the texture coordinates by advecting them along a flow field. Use any 2D vector field and apply displacement to each coordinate iteratively. Even inaccurate explicit methods give good results.

After the coordinates have been distorted to a far distance, the image becomes unrecognizable. A simple hack is to have a "restore" force applied to the coordinates, and they spring back to their original position, like flattening a piece of mirroring foil.

Just now I am using feedback along with these displacement effects. Very small displacements applied iteratively result in motion that looks quite a bit like fluid flow.

I love how easy it is to write shaders that operate on images in HTML. My skills in this area are mediocre but I love seeing how far people can take it. Even providing a simple approximation of a depth map can really make the results interesting.

Some years ago I did a similar project to smoothly crossfade (with "interesting effects") between images using some of the same techniques. My writeup (and a demo):

https://sheep.horse/2017/9/crossfading_photos_with_webgl_-_b...

I’ll be honest I’m far more interested in the rolling hills article that accompanies this one.

Specifically about halfway through the process and applying:

uv.x = uv.x + sin(time + uv.x * 30.0) * 0.02; uv.y = uv.y + sin(time + uv.y * 30.0) * 0.02;

to the static image. Having experienced a range of psychedelic experiences in my life this appears to be the closest visually with the real thing, at least at low, non-heroic, doses. Maybe slow the waves down and lessen the range of motion a bit.

Note: I am far more interested in replicating the visual hallucinations induced by psychedelic compounds than by making cool visuals for concerts and shows, utmost respect for both sets of artists though.

There is an artist (and I’m sure many more) who does a fantastic job with psychedelic visuals using fully modern stacks to edit, unfortunately their account name entirely escapes me. I’ll comment below if I find it.

The comparison that I would make with this portion of the Rolling Hills article would be the mushroom tea scene from Midsommar, specifically with the tree bark. The effect of objects “breathing” and flowing is such a unique visual and I love to see artists accomplishing it in different ways.

Early 90s, Todd Rundgren realized a Mac App called Flowfazer - it didn’t simulate your experience but was helpful as a distraction to move you along. Some people used it to provide guidance for their own creations.[2]

[1] https://grokware.com/ [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z4X4FmIhIw

It was a time of screensavers and palette animation.

If this is your kind of thing and you ever get a chance to see the musical artist Tipper alongside Fractaled Visions driving the visuals, you’re in for a treat.

Most spot on visual depictions of psychedelic artifacts I’ve witnessed.

Saw them together last year and it’s the no. 1 artistic experience of my life. The richness, and complexity of Fractaled Vision’s visuals are almost unbelievable.

Even knowing a lot about shader programming, etc. some of the effects I was like “wtf how did he do that”.

Here’s the set, doesn’t fully capture the experience, but gives a feel: Seeing this in 4k at 60fps was next level.

https://youtu.be/qMcqw12-eSk?si=R5mCaIbR01w3Tbyv

This needs a link to shadertoy https://www.shadertoy.com

Reminds me of an old Flash classic in this area, Flashback.swf. Here's a video render of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KaSqrx93rS0

I've been writing webgl shaders at work this week and noodling with the details to make things look like physical camera effects but occasionally I'll get something wrong and see results that look similar to the stuff in this article and I have to say it is just so much more fun than the standard image effects.

Sure there might be limited use cases for it visually but playing with the models we've built up around how graphics in computers work are a great way to learn about the each one of these systems. Not just graphics but fundamental math in programming, how GPUs work and their connection to memory and CPUs, how our eyes work, how to handle animation/time, and so on.

Here's a music video the OP and I made with these techniques: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GOciie5Pjk

This might have been written just for me, I love the premise.

I am truly fascinated by people who attempt to reproduce the actual physiological vision effects of psychedelic drugs.

Psychoactive drugs can be probes into the inner workings of our minds - in some scientific sense - and exploring the vision effects seems likely to suggest interesting things about how our visual system works.

Mostly, I am just impressed when anyone is able to capture the visual experience in graphical effects, with any level of realism.