CHE-YU WU / LAB
A year in the making
Art, sound, tools and teaching meet on one wall. Follow a documented connection, or begin with a single piece of paper.
2020-09-09 — 2021-09-0932 public records
Red string: documented links · Twine: shared themes · Hover a paper to read a connection.
Complete records ↓
Read the year downwards, one month at a time. The small tags under a card are its connections: open one to jump to the record it names.
2020 · 09
2020 · 10
2020 · 11
2020 · 12
2021 · 01
2021 · 02
2021 · 03
2021 · 04
2021 · 05
2021 · 06
2021 · 07
2021 · 08
2021 · 09
Complete records
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Each record retains its date basis, public sources and connection labels.
Curvy Vine — daily sketch
From a single growth to a macroscopic phenomenon, / changing and vanishing without pause, / never quite uniform, yet blooming into flowers in the end.
- Growth
- Curves
Sources & related records
Parallel universe — daily sketch
Playing with shaders again after a long while. / One probability of a world after another, / hidden between the twisted dimensions of parallel universes, / every present moment producing countless split causalities.
- Shaders
- Cosmos
Sources & related records
New Dimensions — daily sketch
Adding dimensions, layer upon layer of computation building an unreal world, / approaching reality without pause, and still false. / A test of generating dynamic 3D textures shaped into a ring.
- Dimensions
- Texture
Sources & related records
Wild Dreams — daily sketch
Every moment of reality carries a few wild dreams, / spreading freely across the field of time until they exhaust themselves and twist into shapes that can never come true. / Still, take it easy: without some regrets, life would be far too sweet. / An attempt to put recursion together with a shader, set to slightly unhinged music.
- Dreams
- Recursion
Sources & related records
Nightmare — daily sketch
First the rolling stone gathers moss and slows down, / everyday scenery rusts and the steel bars show through, / one careless step aside leaves a puncture wound, / and out of the loveliest gaps of time it spreads / until the view ahead is covered by a pitch black wall.
- Dreamscape
- Erosion
Sources & related records
- Foundation Classic Series · Taken into the Foundation classic series (Documented connection)
Nervous System — daily sketch
A little electrical signal, plus a few chemical molecules, / and anxiety is born and grows strong in a faint corner, / so that night was filled with murmurs that could not be muted, / and sleep never came again.
- Nerves
- Anxiety
Sources & related records
Face Sampling — daily sketch
So are human beings also machines? / Do we sample familiar contours in the brain through some complex neural network, / connecting point after point of data until it becomes the you in memory? / Did that person really exist, or is it only an illusion sampled across countless present moments? / A test of using my own facial data points for creation, with a shader adding distortion.
- Faces
- Data points
Sources & related records
- Mirror Fractal — daily sketch · Distorting images with shaders (Curatorial theme)
Colour Anemone — p5.js livestream notes
A step-by-step guide to making a dispersing anemone, drawing writhing lines and a frame effect in p5.js. The livestream covers four parts: tentacles built from wavering lines, mouse interaction plus colour, texture and an outer frame, finer tentacles for detail, and a converging base that gathers the anemone into a cluster.
- Lines
- Tutorial
Sources & related records
- Coral Carnival — daily sketch · Lines of sea creatures (Curatorial theme)
Metal Planet — daily sketch
A melting core deforms in the sky, / an overheated temperature that cannot find the shape it should have.
- Planets
- Metal
Sources & related records
Mirror Fractal — daily sketch
It cannot reflect a complete face. / The sphere is not imperfect, the mirror is broken, / and it can only reflect fractal fragments of reality.
- Fractals
- Mirrors
Sources & related records
- Face Sampling — daily sketch · Distorting images with shaders (Curatorial theme)
Aurora — daily sketch
Gathered together, guided by what we call fate, / leaving behind a colourful radiance after the meeting, then fading. / It still exists in the past, yet it will never return.
- Aurora
- Particles
Sources & related records
Strange Robots — daily sketch
The little robots have crooked ears, some wear a stern green face, / whether you are round or square, or waving an orange antenna, / whether you lift a smug corner of the mouth, none of it is any trouble at all. / Your odd shapes and odd temperaments are what make you one of a kind.
- Robots
- Characters
Sources & related records
- Strange Robots — public release · The public release on the same day (Curatorial theme)
- CryptoPochi · Characters grown from the daily sketches (Curatorial theme)
Strange Robots — public release
Strange Robots was released as a public sketch on OpenProcessing, where anyone can open the code, read it and remake it. The work itself is that day's daily sketch, a crowd of little robots with crooked ears and antennae.
- Open source
- Robots
Sources & related records
- Strange Robots — daily sketch · The public release on the same day (Curatorial theme)
Wave Circuit — p5.js livestream notes
A step-by-step guide to a wave circuit effect, drawing the background grid, the connecting lines and the decorative details in p5.js. The notes describe moving back and forth between the three parts, refining details until the piece is finished.
- Grids
- Tutorial
Sources & related records
Marking Life — daily sketch
Underline the important things with a highlighter, / add a few more colourful fragments when there is time, / then write over the memories you would rather not revisit with correction tape. / Kept or not, the small things of a life are marked into your chapters.
- Memory
- Marking
Sources & related records
Trigonometry for the web, Part 1 — satellite around the moon
The notes first work through trigonometric calculation and translate it into code, then use html (pug), css (sass) and js to build a satellite orbiting the moon from scratch as a web animation. Two past cases, Dyverse Studio and the Complex Life Festival, illustrate why trigonometry, coordinate systems and canvas matter for real-time drawing.
- Trigonometry
- Web motion
Sources & related records
- Trigonometry for the web, Part 2 — sci-fi clock · Part one of the same series (Documented connection)
- Crazy Tornado — p5.js livestream notes · Listed in the notes as trigonometry part one (Documented connection)
Trigonometry for the web, Part 2 — sci-fi clock
Building a sci-fi clock with trigonometry and canvas. The notes argue that mathematics helps produce interesting motion in web design, and that mathematical expressions travel everywhere, from visual effects to data analysis, as an elegant way to describe something.
- Trigonometry
- Canvas
Sources & related records
- Trigonometry for the web, Part 1 — satellite around the moon · Part one of the same series (Documented connection)
- Crazy Tornado — p5.js livestream notes · Listed in the notes as trigonometry part two (Documented connection)
Wiggle Planet — daily sketch
The spaceship has landed. This stop is at Alpha.26, coordinates ( 8.0068 , 3.200000 ), / but it seems to be shaking violently, so the report to the station says it is not fit to live on. / What cannot be observed is treated as nonexistent, and an overactive core cannot hide its heat. / Then let us camp on this planet and go mad together.
- Planets
- Vibration
Sources & related records
Crazy Tornado — p5.js livestream notes
Combining geometric shapes with trigonometry, the notes build a tornado lifting a cow and a barn in p5.js. The tornado silhouette comes first, then the objects it picks up, and finally the background colour, texture, line adjustments and mouse interaction.
- Polar coordinates
- Tutorial
Sources & related records
- Trigonometry for the web, Part 1 — satellite around the moon · Listed in the notes as trigonometry part one (Documented connection)
- Trigonometry for the web, Part 2 — sci-fi clock · Listed in the notes as trigonometry part two (Documented connection)
Chaos Dancer — daily sketch
She keeps turning on the stage, circle after circle, / sometimes a duet, sometimes letting go of the hand and leaping alone. / Every performance is a trajectory that cannot be reproduced, / carrying newly mixed colours, taking her bow at a show with no audience. / Made with @p5xjs
- Dancer
- Trajectory
Sources & related records
- Foundation Classic Series · Taken into the Foundation classic series (Documented connection)
Aqua Planet — glowing colliding planet
Building a glowing aqua planet out of particles in p5.js, then adding arcs, connecting lines and an outer measuring scale. A blue particle cloud is assembled with functions, animated with noise, paired with warmer orange particles, and finished with gauges that make the piece read as an observation.
- Particles
- Planets
Sources & related records
- Quantum Unstable — a glowing entangled system · The same approach of particles and gauges (Curatorial theme)
PARAÌSO — M.A.D.S. Gallery
The artist page at M.A.D.S. Art Gallery presents Che-Yu Wu as working from the meeting point of engineering and art, drawing on nature, physics, modern art and mathematics, and lists works including The Soul of Flowers, Sweet Dreams, Causality, Nightmare, Chaos Dancer, Tangled and Triangle Picnic.
- Gallery
- International showing
Sources & related records
Foundation Classic Series
A classic series on Foundation that mints at most ten works per algorithm. The catalog page records the start as July 1st, 2021, and lists works including 201127 Nightmare, 210612 Chaos Dancer, 200609 Causality, 200612 Triangle Picnic and 210913 Sweet Dreams.
- Generative art
- Editions
Sources & related records
- Nightmare — daily sketch · Taken into the Foundation classic series (Documented connection)
- Chaos Dancer — daily sketch · Taken into the Foundation classic series (Documented connection)
Coral Carnival — daily sketch
It has grown hotter again, and even memories are beginning to bleach. / The clownfish has left for good, and coral without him / is really no more than a colourful empty shell. / Social animals cannot leave one another after all, / yet they drifted apart and left only the relics of time.
- Coral
- Bleaching
Sources & related records
- Colour Anemone — p5.js livestream notes · Lines of sea creatures (Curatorial theme)
- Island Impression — daily sketch · Watching the sea and its life (Curatorial theme)
Quantum Unstable — a glowing entangled system
Deforming concentric circles made in p5.js. The notes record starting without a fixed idea: points are placed in polar coordinates and joined with curveVertex(), and only at step five, when a central nucleus appears, does the physics and science fiction direction settle, after which free particles, numbered gauges and surrounding lines finish the piece.
- Concentric circles
- Sci-fi style
Sources & related records
- Aqua Planet — glowing colliding planet · The same approach of particles and gauges (Curatorial theme)
Sweet Trap — daily sketch
Hatched in the shadows, giving off a thorned sweetness, / a vivid phantom coiling upward, / turning in the cycle without ever noticing, / woken only at the moment before suffocation, / eyes wide open, staring at its own folly.
- Traps
- Sweetness
Sources & related records
A dynamic timeline with Pug, Sass and Vue.js
Building a dynamic timeline on CodePen with Pug, Sass and Vue.js. Three things come first: the data shown on the timeline, the layout with a colour and size library, and the trigger plus loading animation that fetch the data, demonstrated with a logs array holding years and content.
- Timelines
- Front-end
Sources & related records
Fireworks Festival — daily sketch
Brief but brilliant, burning life to ignite the spectrum, / cherishing every bloom because each one takes a different shape. / Fireworks made with a particle system and gradient colours.
- Fireworks
- Particle systems
Sources & related records
Unsolvable Knot — daily sketch
Uncontrollable factors keep spreading, / tangling into an intricate ending. / Some unsolvable pasts are better left untouched.
- Knots
- Entanglement
Sources & related records
Island Impression — daily sketch
On the other side of the sea there seem to be islands. / Gazing out, sometimes a faint outline is visible, / sometimes it is swallowed by haze and glinting waves, sometimes it gathers and scatters again. / Do they really exist, or has my own insistence turned into an illusion?
- Islands
- Sea
Sources & related records
- Coral Carnival — daily sketch · Watching the sea and its life (Curatorial theme)
Birds on Wires — daily sketch
Desire to fly, gather on the unsteady steel cables, / Imitating moves of others, rushing to jump in the crowd, / Try your best to not fall from the wires, / Not even have the freedom to touch the sky.
- Birds
- Flocks
Sources & related records
CryptoPochi
A collection of mysterious creatures whose faces carry everyday emotions; the site says they are you and me, lying on the ground and playing all day. Early minting for Sea Ham holders opened at 15:00 UTC on 5 September 2021, public minting the next day, and all 732 sold out. The site also notes that Pochis stem from Sleepy Pochi, a generative work in the daily creative coding series.
- Characters
- Minting
Sources & related records
- Strange Robots — daily sketch · Characters grown from the daily sketches (Curatorial theme)