The theme of !SABER! captures the endless struggle between chaos and order in natural systems - with a focus on the instant that order collapses into disarray. Examples include the moment a school of fish or flock of birds scatter, or just as a rock lands in a smooth river. A sense of motion and depth, reaction to a known adversary or to an unknown outside force, are central aspects. The shapes used to express this dynamic are polygons (chaos) and circles (order), juxtaposed to express conflict.

The subject matter is classic video games - mainly space shooters. Growing up in the 80s I experienced arcade culture at its peak, and have a powerful feeling of nostalgia for this special time and place. To explore this I imagined finding code from a long lost game that would have been the greatest space shooter of its generation but was abandoned early in development. The game mechanic would have been similar to Star Wars (1983) with the player controlling a cross hairs and shooting lasers at polygonal enemy spacecraft. The enemies flowed at the player from the sides and the far distance in at times chaotic, at times orderly patterns, borrowing elements from Galaga (1981), Tempest (1981), and Asteroids (1979) with the frantic pacing of Robotron: 2084 (1982) and Centipede (1980). As well as lasers, the player had an “area attack” weapon that destroyed / dispersed enemies. The game was never finished, so there are no “cross hairs”, only sketches of the enemy spacecraft, the area attack, and the background settings. The player progressed through levels with ominous black holes, multicolored planets and moons, colorful nebula-like environments, and empty deep space. !SABER! is a collection of screenshots from this fictional, unfinished game, with a touch of graffiti and bold 80s attitude.

The code uses a 2d canvas (no shaders) and is based on the math concept - Pursuit Curves - wherein a series of lines “chase” one another as they increase in length (i.e. each line is assigned to chase another). The lines eventually converge but the pursuer never catches the pursuee, forming fluid patterns that naturally give a sense of depth and three dimensions. To achieve the effect of “scattering”, the code switches the ordering of pursuer/pursuee midway through the chase, so that each is suddenly forced to chase another, creating temporary chaos and restarting the transition back to order. The “game level” is based on the size/arrangement/color of the “planets/moons etc.”, the color pattern of the “space setting” (background), and the density/complexity of the “enemies” (polygons). The color palettes are directly from screenshots of popular 80s arcade, console, and PC video games (e.g. Zaxxon-1982, Starflight-1986, Gradius-1985), which are referenced as a trait (“Classic Game”). Twenty palettes in total containing hundreds of distinct colors are used. To simulate viewing on 1980s CRT monitors, a scan line filter is applied to each rendering, with two different versions the viewer can cycle through (press “g” post render). This effect captures the aesthetic that gamers experienced at that time, depending on the monitor type. There are 2 rare output types: “Dark Saber” and the more rare “Light Saber”, which are the settings for the penultimate and final levels, respectively. The collection size (512) is a tribute to the 512KB (that’s correct - kilobytes) of RAM in my 1986 Leading Edge Model D PC.

!SABER! elicits a sense of excitement, an adrenaline rush in response to an onslaught of shape and color, the fear of not being in control, the beauty of the delicate balance between order and chaos, and nostalgia for 80s arcades.