This is not a rock.

One day in 1991, I went swimming in a lake. Going out to the deepest point where I could still tippy-toe touch the bottom, I felt a large, smooth rock with my feet. I could barely dig it out and bring it to the surface. That rock is still with me. I once thought I lost it and was devastated. Six months later, I found it in the trunk of my car. I threw a party to celebrate its return, but it was just us two.

The rocks in this generative artwork are not my rock. They are not rocks. They are not even images of rocks. They're code. But does that matter? If I were to show and ask you "What is this?", you'd probably say "It's a rock". So then, what is it? The title and imagery borrow from René Magritte's paintings Treachery of Images and The Castle of the Pyrenees. Like those paintings, This Is Not A Rock acts as a gateway to introspection and encourages the viewer to question what they are looking at while thinking about the interplay between object, representation, and truth.

• Cathode Ray Tube

• Pumpkin Field

• Sunburnt Dinosaur

• Born To Kill

• Eggplant Boulevard

• Community Pool

• Moldy Shiraz

• Misty Beach

• Mandarin Necktie

• Lava Crust

• Woodstock

• 50 Shades Of Grape

• Lost Signal

• Alphabet Soup

• Purple Sunset

• Campfire

• Zucchini Salad

• Black & White

• Full Moon Lagoon

• Sour Patch Kid

Colorization

There are 6 distinct methods used to color the texture of the rock.

 

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  Fill

  Mostly solid colors with little variation in hue.

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  Swirl

  Patterns which swirl and bend along the surface.

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  Digital

  Blocky unnatural patterns of color.

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  Blob

  Variations of hue in a blob-type pattern.

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  Psychedelic

  A vibrant, colorful pattern of swirls and blobs.

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  Noise

  A mix of the Psychedelic and Blob colorization methods.

Backgrounds

The granite background comes in either light or dark variations.

 

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  Light

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  Dark