This instance of the war/peace assignment allowed only the use of simple geometric shapes and one word: “peace” to represent and promote peace. I started brainstorming for this by doodling many possible designs that came up in my head that to me represented peace. I came up with many variations of circles and ellipses, overlapping, concentric, contained within squares and rectangles, droplets of water, puddles, clouds, and on and on. Although I didn’t want to approach with the generic symbols, the final design happened to be of a dove. The process came in a moment of inspiration when I realized the circles that I was drawing all had the appearance of a peace dove. The overlay of circles outlined the basic body, head and wing of a bird. I loved the simplicity of the image because in my mind peace was pure and simple. In my head the whole time I knew that I didn’t want anything that too complex but rather just a single representation of what peace meant to me. To create and reproduce this on the computer required me to make some decisions on whether to shade the regions of overlap, whether to have the original outlines of the ellipses, maybe to bold the outline of the dove. Did I want to enclose the dove in another circle? In the end I decided that the viewer should not see the makeup of the image, but rather only see the final dove. So I decided to have no borders, no enclosing circle, and no obvious boundary of where the ellipses might have been had they been outlined. If the viewer was looking for circles they would be able to find them, but if they stepped back it would be peace to its simplest degree.

What represents war, but also promoted it? I wanted to have an abstract approach to this particular instance where DBN code was used to produce a program that paints my ideas on war. I wanted to use the fluid nature of the DBN program to create a continuum of images. In the ideas that spanned the creation of this program I decided that I liked the idea of progression. I wanted to create a sense of security, but in such a way that the viewer can interpret it in their own way. I decided to have 2 main frames, one that was faster, and one that was slower. The first faster set of images consisted of squares shooting off into space along an arc, as the word war flies into the screen. To me the squares represent the bullets and ammunition of battle that come with war, but it is not explicit. The second frame was slower and had rectangles building off one another in an upward arc. This idea parallels the arcing of the squares earlier, but also allows the viewer to slow down and feel more secure. My idea behind it was to have a feeling that war although damaging with its rainfall of bullets, also builds the bigger picture and security of the world as a whole. Step by step, war helps create the more stable environment for the future. Since I feel neither very strongly for pro-war or anti-war, I didn’t want a very intrusive image representing war. I also like the idea of letting the viewer make their own interpretations and emotions after seeing my images.