My first contact with the instancing technique was through TouchDesigner. After some brief research, I found its implementation origins in the early 2000s with DirectX and OpenGL, as an effort to optimize the heavy performance demands placed on the CPU. Its inherent efficiency allows for a good, uninterrupted workflow, facilitating the composition process. Working with this technique in real-time is magical and mesmerizing, close to the act of dreaming, a gentle intersection of the technical and the poetic. Its fluidity allows for contact with the sensible.
“Instancing is used for data visualization, creating point clouds, and rendering many copies of a single piece of geometry efficiently.” — 201 – Converting Data Types & Instancing
Something that truly changed my perception of this was understanding that "data" can be transformed into positions, rotation, scale, among other parameters, in an environment that simulates 3D. In truth, this conversion is an illusion, as we don't really have anything three-dimensional in digital terms; everything we see is just pixels on a screen. Understanding the basic concepts, the foundations of the connections, is essential for orchestrating a good articulation between operator families and for exploring the most varied forms of visual construction. Basic concepts should be a constant in the creative workflow, as they form a solid foundation for moving forward with more complex structures.
The direction is to try to express the 'most with the least.'
“We must travel towards the supreme expressive form and the supreme emotional form and use the limit of the simple and economic form that expresses what we need.” Eisenstein, S.
I am consistently studying, maturing, and sharing (on my social media) the use of this technique. Something important is to always be mindful of a good use of the fundamentals, with highlights on the 100 and 200 series from Derivative.
