ARTIST STATEMENT Ever since I was able to acquire a capable personal computer in 1994, I have been involved in the creation and design of digital art. The freedom and flexibility that such a platform offers to an artist is quite incredible, but with it come new challenges of developing the tools and learning the inner workings of the software packages that we need to use in order for our ideas to be realized. Specifically, I have worked on interactive projects, varying from computer games to internet information sites, as well as short films and animation projects. I am very interested in the development of such tools to allow the artist to conceptualize and create amazing new visual materials, which would be engaging and refreshing, but also present a new perspective on more traditional concepts. I enjoy creating virtual environments and worlds, and having to tackle the challenges and problems that come up during the development of such works. Digital media presents a variety of ever changing ways for art to manifest itself through many different forms. The increased complexity of projects often encourage artists to collaborate and work together with engineers. The artist is placed in a more serious role of being designer as well, especially when the user interface needs to be considered and implemented in interactive projects. The work can often be updated and improved in the future, and the idea of such continuous and never ending process is intriguing to me. I greatly enjoy all aspects of creating computer games, especially the art direction and style of such projects. In general, the aesthetics play a significant role in the immersion that one can create for their audience, although sound and good old story and character development also contribute their fair share. The user interface or the input controls (I used a Wacom tablet to simulate a surface computer for my Flash based game Breach for example) also determine the accessibility of a game to a wider range of audience. In the end, all must come together in the right bland, and result in an entertainment software which is fun and engaging for people to enjoy in their spare time. BIOGRAPHY Donko Jeliazkov was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria and immigrated to the United States in 1992. He finished his undergraduate studies at Georgia Tech (1999-2004) in the field of computer science, with a specialization in computer graphics. He has worked on interactive media, such as computer games and a lot of visualization projects, which involve 3D modeling and rendering. He has worked with real time 3D graphics, using OpenGL and open game libraries such as ClanLib, in C/C+ programming languages. His focus has been on creating realistic visuals and animations, as well as creating unique graphic styles for games, with the proper art direction. Donko is currently attending Rhode Island School of Design (2007-2009), where he is studying Digital Media. He has worked with Flash extensively, and created several interactive works, including a 4 player digital board game, designed to mimic the playing style of a traditional family board game. In addition, he has worked on a simulation where he developed a data search and visualization application using a search engine similar to that of Google. HEAVEN + EARTH Heaven and Earth explores the generative process of poetry, where 2 different grammars are combined and simulate a battle of the strongest scenario, where one grammar eventually becomes victories. The outcome of which grammar is the dominant is based on the relative strength in numbers of each word in the 5 sentences. The project was created in Processing, using Daniel Howe's Rita library and also has a documentation component built using Flash. http://dm.risd.edu/~djeliazkov/CS1950/HE1_3 FLAVIUS "Flavius" (2008) is a limited engagement run of the most-forgotten and least-beloved work of William Shakespeare. Lord Flavius (Donko Jeliazkov)uncovers the truth About his bastard child, son of his wife, Lady Annabelle (Jenny Filipetti), and the Faerie King Lucitor (Jeremy Ashkenas). Disregarding Lucitor's prophecy About the death of the child, Lady Annabelle ends its life, causing Lucitor to fight Flavius in single combat. When Flavius is run through on his own spear, Lady Annabelle undergoes a change of heart, and with a little help from his ghost, murders Lucitor while he sleeps. This delightful tragicomedy entertains children of all ages. http://dm.risd.edu/~djeliazkov/CS1950/Flavius/index.html AURENVI Project Aurenvi analyzes a sound file and extrapolates key information About that specific file, such as beats, tempo, timbre, pitch, frequency and other audio characteristics. Using such parameters as inputs, a world is generated that is unique to the contents of that music file. The world can be very abstract in nature, although there would be certain rules that govern its creation from start to finish. Simple shapes such as squares and circles can be transformed and manipulated to generate more complex structures, with the end resulting being an interesting and hopefully beautiful image. We considered several libraries that have already been created to help us analyze audio files, with the most promising being http://www.echonest.com. http://dm.risd.edu/~djeliazkov/CS1950/Aurenvi EXTROPICS Project Overview Words will appear on-screen encapsulated in visuals similar to cellular organelles and/or other microscropic creatures. Visually, these creatures will be translucent and monochromatic. These word-creatures will be procedurally animated and will move About the screen. The initial population will be based on a concordance of a source text of poems. Creatures will then be able to recombine (i.e. eat eachother) to form chain-like organisms, based on a probability distribution from a word level N-gram run on the source texts. As the user watches, words will accrete to form phrases, and ultimately sentences and then paragraphs. The user will be able to interact with the creatures through a “fishtank” UI metaphor, whereby the user can drop additional words into the tank by drag-and-drop from a palette of words. Technical Implementation Overview The project will be implemented in Java as an applet, and the goal will be to create a project which will run smoothly in the browser. To this end, the project will be subject to the technical limitations placed on an applet (RAM, file system access, etc.) and thus an important aspect of the technical design will be in minimizing the memory and resource footprint of the application so that it will run as an applet. The structure of the application will be multi-threaded and will center around a backend layer, and a frontend presentation layer - probably in separate threads. Each word creature will be procedurally animated, and will also move based on a primarily reactive AI controller. The AI controller will have goals such as eating targets and avoiding walls and obstacles, which will subsume eachother. A core goal will be to create engaging and evocative visuals for the creatures, which will be based on pre-made primitives but also be paramaterized randomely at run time so as to create a wide variety of unique-looking creatures. The goal is to simulate a large number of creatures on the backend thread and cull creatures which are not visible from the front-end rendering layer. An N-gram will be created (probably N=3 to N=5) based on a source body of input text, probably poems which are in the public domain. This N-gram will then be used to stochastically control whether two creatures can combine, based on the word sequence information which will be obtained from the N-gram. Special period creatures will populate the "primordial soup" allowing sentences to form (again, based on the N-gram data) when necessary, and ultimately even paragraphs. A UI layer will also be implemented allowing users to interact with the creatures, control the overall simulation settings, and add additional words. http://dm.risd.edu/~djeliazkov/CS1950/Extropics/index.html THESIS WORK IN PROGRESS: LINESARIS The idea behind this project is to use the organizational structure and hierarchy of human society, as it has passed through various stages of evolution and development, and create an alternative approach, which may manifest itself in the form of an alien society. The structure will be represented through geometric objects, such as simple cubes, which will be arranged in patterns and clusters representing relationships and ideals. Although the majority of the visuals could be made up of such cubes, there would be additional graphics such as various effects that symbolize the bonding, moods and feelings of these objects. The data set that will be used to generate this world does not have to be 100% authentic, but it may rely on current models of our society or idealistic views as described in prominent writings, such as the concepts of utopia or mathematical worlds. Although I would read such texts, I would also like to focus on the individual, for he represents the core of any society. Often times, what is good for the individual is not so great for society and visa versa, despite the relationship that it is the individual who makes the society what it really is. I should also be able to enjoy certain freedoms in expressing this alien society, as I can perhaps tie in a different aesthetic or deeper and interwoven message, which will not be so readily apparent at first glance. In the latest development of this project, I am using 3D Studio MAX and Greeble to generate the cubical virtual environments, and Maxwell renderer to handle the final visualization. I am currently focusing on building the system that would allow me to display the information, and although I have narrowed down the data set from a too generic and gargantuan perspective to a more down to earth approach, I have not finalized the exact inputs and other generative criteria for the world as of the writing of this update.