Marina Zurko, an artist and animator, is the creator of an open framework which she can use to control the different aspects of her character's environments. With the help of her friend Jeff Crouse she created this program and called it Ecosystem Engine. By exploring both art and code together, they managed to create 3D graphics on a web browser without hardware. These 3D characters react to another but never twice in the same way.
The piece titled "Weights + Measures" is about the world as an ecosystem. Using three machines (an airplane, an elephant, and plankton) the artists brought out the meaning of each as they are displayed swimming, flying, and darting across the screen. The airplanes are representative of transportation and war, as are the elephants. Elephants are at the top of the food chain because of both size and status. The plankton rest at the bottom of the food chain and eat the carbon dioxide produced by the airplane. However, the ecosystem would die without the plankton. The clip nicely displays the presence of both old and new age ideas. There is so much more to the dynamics of the blurp of the long program. The clip quickly throws together a quick representation of the artists view of how our ecosystem works.
The animated graphics are impressive, but not so much as the program itself. There wasn't much integration of color. Most of the screen remains blue. The sinking airplanes are a greyish tint but mostly just an etched figure. The swimming elephants are transparent sketches with red eyes. Finally, the plankton dart into the image as white orbs with red dots much similar to the elephant's eye. The floating green plankton are a more subtle addition to the ecosystem. There's a lot going on in the browser at once making it easy to see how the program can run forever and not repeat itself.
Sources:
www.eyebeam.org
www.ecosystemengine.com
