Wind: 8mph SW
If You Are The Wind

4K 60fps ASCII video rendering on RaspberryPi

Keywords:

ASCII art, Python, RaspberryPi, PyGame, OpenCV, collectivity, visual perception

The computing art piece “Wind: 8mph SW” is a 4K video generated by computer vision library - OpenCV, designed to be the background of my personal website. It features several things that have been prominent in my life starting several years ago.

The project design:
With a combination of PyGame and OpenCV, I'm able to reach what I would like to put on my personal website in the future, depicting the attitude to life that I am working towards. Due to my interest in digits and data science, I choose to use ASCII code during the design process as the principal component of my artistic rendering. I did spend some time troubleshooting bugs and the outcome that I don't want. Figuring out adding a background under this ASCII representation is not what I imagine is the most interesting part of programming this project. Because how the pixels are collected and render a view and how my brain perceives it, when I was working on the individual pixels, there is a different output as I imagined. At that second, it was a flashbulb reminding me why I chose to learn Machine Learning inside Cognitive Science department instead of other departments.

The components:
In my imagination, if the wind would head towards South-west from San Diego, it would eventually reach Shanghai, the city I will always be in love with. “8mph” is my taste of using randomness in my artwork (computer music piece and computing art piece). I collected the wind speed of the time when I decided to run the 20 seconds 4K 60fps video for the last time. I appreciate the randomness in my life creating tiny surprise and happiness for me.

For the denotative aspect, “If you were the wind” and its correlated scene kept showing in my mind lately when I finally started music production myself. I dreamed about myself bathed in the sunshine, standing in the wind, letting the wind to kiss my hair several times. If I would come up a poem, this would be the scene I could depict.

These years are tough. Covid-19 and lock down situations made things rough. My fever for lions started the second months after I entered UC San Diego two years ago. I saw one picture of one of my favorite models after I finished my class 3am, because the remote learning and time zone issues. “If a man could enjoy the freedom as lions, this is it”, I thought. I can't help retrieving my imagination of watching the sunset on Serengeti was already there during my first year of high school even years later. I want to live like this. I want to live if I were the wind; I am the wind.