Find Your Inner Zen In These Blissed-Out Digital Sunsets

We've all been there: exhausted, with two hours of work left to go, deep in the tombs of Google Images or Tumblr, eyes burning at the stock image of somewhere we'd rather be. Turks & Caicos, maybe? Tahiti? Longing to visit an imaginary tropical island where the sand is warm, and the frozen drinks are as endless as the sunsets— now, thanks to a new Processing application created by Joseph Gray, if you squint your eyes tight enough, you can.

Created on the back of the Google Search API, Infinite Sunset is the blissed-out, ever-changing, Google DevArt-shortlisted result of an experiment in representative, generative visuals. In some ways, it's reminiscent of the transcendent work by Computers Club founder Krist Wood.

From its project description:

Created after visiting Kauai and staring West into the Pacific quite a bit during sundown […] It intentionally uses simple graphical elements to visually describe a sunset seascape ever changing in its sameness. The piece is meant to be viewed with various devices/contexts and is therefore a "responsive" composition. Aesthetically the piece pursues the reductionist purity of certain mid-century modernist perspectives but using the contemporary, generative, medium of code.

It's a perfectly meditative distraction for the errant escapist in all of us; the code searches Google for images flagged under the term, "sunset,"  then breaks them down into arrays of colors which are then transposed into the simply gorgeous horizon-scapes you see here. Intended to replace the fleeting feeling of watching a sunset on one's lonesome, Infinite Sunsets becomes the perfect digital surrogate for all your afternoon introspections.

Below, screenshots from Infinite Sunset(via Amusement.net and CreativeApplications):

To learn more about Joseph Gray's work, visit him at Grauwald Creative. And to enjoy more of Infinite Sunset, visit its official project page. h/t CreativeApplications

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