Marius Watz

The below text was true when it was written, which was in 1994. Ten years later, the world looks different. My work is still concerned with computer-generated imagery, but looks very different. To see how, take a look at my sites Unlekker and Evolutionzone.

This SITO page will remain as testimony to a younger and more delightfully naive version of myself...

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Marius Watz studies Computer Science at the University of Oslo. He works with multimedia and graphic design, doing some writing on the side. His work is mainly concerned with computer generated or manipulated/mutilated imagery.

Image-mutilated images (put them where you want them):

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     74586 Nov 22 00:22 Exit-1-to-5.jpg

  Five variations on the theme of a stylized running man. The design
  for the man was actually taken from a ten year old book on writing 
  video games.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     66702 Nov 22 00:21 aztecish.gif

  Standard image manipulation - fiery colors.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    305331 Nov 22 00:22 cave-mandel.gif

  Manipulated mandelbrot picture. Originally made in Mandella with
  the "Strands" drawing method specified. Manipulated to look
  vaguely like a cave painting.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     66227 Nov 22 00:22 future-shock.jpg

  Future Shock - pretty garish composition. Uses a picture from
  German "scientific" tests - how much wind can a pilot take.
  Glowing nuclear sign.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     43442 Nov 22 00:22 strange-life.gif

  Manipulated picture of a cellular automaton. Variation on the
  classic Life rule. Looks a bit digital.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     86237 Nov 22 00:22 zodiac.jpg

  Composition using a scanned picture of one of the cypher
  letters the serial killer Zodiac sent to the police.
  The circle with a cross is his symbol. He claimed to
  have killed 37 people, but the police can only attribute
  him with 7 confirmed murders. Never caught.


Raytraces(for raytraces/watz?):

These were made with POV and some tools I have written to generate
POV files. A lot of inspiration is owed to William Latham, and some
of these shapes are mostly recreations of some things he has done
(especially the "hornweb" series). Others are more architectural.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     19727 Nov 22 00:22 bigsperm.jpg

  A version of a shape family called "sperm" for obvious
  reasons.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     23841 Nov 22 00:22 boxy2.gif

  An interesting experiment with using boxes as a basic unit.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     71735 Nov 22 00:22 bush.gif

  A bush structure. Pretty weird.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     35188 Nov 22 00:22 coil2.gif

  A mathematical construct - a torus knot. The object was made
  by a program written by Bill Kirby and updated by me to 
  output to POV 2.0 syntax and support blobs. Blobs were used
  to give the smooth surface.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     64376 Nov 22 00:22 funchorn.gif

  A pretty funny shape.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     35046 Nov 22 00:22 hornweb1.jpg
-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     64944 Nov 22 00:22 hornweb8.gif
-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     65713 Nov 22 00:22 hornweb9.gif

  These are all in the "hornweb" family of shapes. "hornweb1.jpg"
  is an example of a hornweb with texture.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    187917 Nov 22 00:22 landscape.gif

  Lo-res version of an image that will be displayed at CyberCulture
  Houston. Shows an eerie landscape in which objects float, rise
  or sink. This is the piece I have gotten most responses because
  of, and it seems to evoke associations in people. Heck, I just
  made a routing that "throws" objects about.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     32556 Nov 22 00:22 landscape2.gif

  An illustration which will be seen in a Norwegian anthology on 
  digital culture. It's basically a test of a pet peeve of mine,
  putting one shape inside another and then cutting parts of the
  outer shell away, revealing the shape inside.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     52371 Nov 22 00:22 menger-variation.gif

  An illustration for the same book as above. It's a variation
  of Menger's Cube, a favorite object of mine. It's a fractal
  construct akin to the Sierpinski Gasket.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     21740 Nov 22 12:29 mother.jpg

  "Mother" - another image which will be shown at CyberCulture Houston.
  Shows a form giving birth to other forms(worm4 below, amongst others).
  I used literal days designing this shape, and I'm still not quite
  pleased. But then, getting a 4'x4' hardcopy version free won't bother
  me.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    104138 Nov 22 00:22 recursive6.gif

  Another fractal object, forms a octahedron by recursively adding
  objects. This is the sixth iteration.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     30269 Nov 22 00:22 worm4.jpg
-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     29745 Nov 22 00:22 worm6.jpg

  These are "animals" used in the artwork of a series of rave flyers
  and a big poster. I hope to put the poster image up later, but
  I will have to get permission from the guy I did it with. The
  poster has a quite powerful effect when seen in 68 cm x 100 cm
  size, and has been spared other posters being stuck on it. 
  Because of respect? I don't know. "Worm4" is the central image
  on the poster, seeming to emerge from a tunnel.


Mathematically constructed images(for mathart/watz?):

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    153513 Nov 22 00:22 bigbomb.gif

  Constructed by a method similar to that of making dendrites,
  but instead of moving particles around I just "bomb" the
  screen with them and check if they are next to a "sticky"
  particle. This creates semi-circular surfaces around the
  original sticky dots.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw     30896 Nov 22 00:22 neonwaves.gif

  A two-dimensional plotting of a function(which I can't
  remember now). Inspired by Pickover's monkey curve pictures.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    144402 Nov 22 00:22 starpic1.gif

  Another function, looks like a star.

-rw-r-----  1 mariusw    149305 Nov 22 00:22 symm2.gif

  A symmetrical strange attractor created after Golubitsky
  and Field's work. Check out "Symmetry in Chaos", a very 
  nice book with BASIC pseudocode...