Predicting the future & good explanations.
How can we responsibly use data to make good predictions? What separates good theories from bad ones? Here I discuss drawing the wrong conclusions and the telltale signs of good explanations.
Simon Harris
My next big change - starting a tech company with friends
After deciding to stop making path-traced art I was feeling a little lost as to where I should focus my energy. By some twist of fate an amazing opportunity fell in my lap - to be part of the founding of a new startup.
Why I stopped making path traced art, and what's next.
'16 hours remaining' said the Houdini Redshift window as I turn off my screen and head to bed.
How I built a barebones WebGL PBR renderer in Nodes.io
This article describes how I implemented a PBR renderer with image based lighting in Nodes.io. The article focuses on structure and the unique challenges faced as well as the advantages of building in Nodes.
Fragments
Learning to write vertex & fragment shaders this year I was struck with an idea. What does it look like, each pixel of the page being processed in parallel. Can we try and visualise it, the processing brain of my graphics work. That thought is what lead me here
Clarity
Only by distorting something can you see its true form. This series explores this idea, shapes being hidden and invisible until twisted and flexed. This morphed shape allows us to see the nature of the object in its rested state.
Explorations
Simons explorations within Houdini in 2020. Presented in no order this is a collection of renders that weren't part of something bigger but I liked in one way or another.
Algorithms, Elves and Recycling - Not every idea has to be original
Learning any artistic skill feels like a loss of innocence. An exploration of what studying Tolkien taught me about creating art now.
Things I've learned in my first 2 years as a creative coder.
The start of summer will mark the end of my first 2 years at Variable.io, a generative design and data visualisation studio in London. Heres some things I have learned.
Organised Reality
A generative art experiment in which we take photographs and sort the rows by their luminosity. We end up with stunning abstract palates, shadowing their original photos to bring new perspective.