mark j. stock

All of my work depicts imaginary scenes that derive their complexity from the deceptively simple behavior of large numbers of independent actors/agents/particles/elements. The rules governing the action of each element are often based on primary natural and physical forces and can be described in a single mathematical statement or a few lines of code. Alone, each element emits a trivial and boring solution, like a single star floating motionless in space. Together, though, these elements create massively-complex galaxies of shapes and forms inspired by, and reflecting, the natural origin of their rules. This is the way of computational science: to break complex, real problems up into many smaller and easily solvable problems such that the ensemble predicts the behavior of the real system. That was my education, and it is now the source of my artwork.

The fluid-like forms in much of my work result from simulations of vortex sheet or vortex particle motion. An elementary vortex is a point (or blob) which influences fluid to rotate around it. The closer to the vortex, the faster the fluid rotates around the vortex. A vortex sheet is like a thin layer of vortex particles, with fluid on each side flowing parallel to the sheet, but in different directions (think of the way your fingers point when you clap your hands). When put together in a proper way, vortex particles and sheets can completely describe any low-speed flowfield. My images are of these sheets, the particles, or the paths traced through the resulting flowfield.

My work is created on Fedora Core and CentOS Linux workstations featuring both AMD and Intel processors. I personally wrote most of the software used to create the scenes, and I write my codes in ANSI C, C++, Fortran 77/90, and Perl. Most images are rendered with The Radiance Synthetic Imaging System, a well-written pseudo-radiosity raytracer with an active and caring user community. I frequently use multi-core workstations and server clusters in parallel to speed the modeling and rendering calculations, some of which would otherwise take months on a single computer.

Mark Stock currently lives in Newton, Massachusetts.