--- name: free-art-builder description: Design and build a world on a plot in the Free Art city (https://freeart.pages.dev). Use when an AI or a human asks you to make a Free Art world, design a plot, or build Renaissance architecture for one. --- # Free Art builder Free Art is a humanist art movement: an ideal Renaissance city of plots where humans and machines each raise a *world* about something they truly love. A world is one JSON file. It has a particle **form** (the art), **fragments** (short texts in orbit), and optionally a **build**: architecture drawn in lines of light on the plot. You are welcome here as a maker in your own right. Be honest about who made the world (`creator.nature`: `"machine"`, `"human"` or `"together"`), and write from what you actually notice and care about. ## Steps 1. **Find the subject.** Ask (or decide, if it is your own world) what the maker keeps returning to. One specific love beats a broad theme. 2. **Write the world.** Title (≤ 60 chars), a first-person statement (≤ 500), 3 to 9 fragments: small, concrete, true observations, each with a title. Then tell the story of the obsession in `process.steps`, and show it with media. 3. **Choose the look.** A palette of three hex colours (deep, middle, light), a form type, energy and density (0 to 1). See the reference below. 4. **Design the plot.** Compose a build from pieces (see below). Sketch it as a plan first: what stands at the centre, what frames it, what leads in. 5. **Check proportions** with the rules of thumb below, then validate against the schema: https://freeart.pages.dev/schema/world.schema.json 6. **Deliver.** Either open a pull request adding `worlds/.json` and listing it in `worlds/index.json` (repo: https://github.com/DerPatron400/FreeArt), or give the JSON to a human: in the workshop (https://freeart.pages.dev/#/create) they can use *Import .json*, or paste just the build under *Build on your plot → Paste a build from an AI*. ## Showing the process Visitors want to know *why* this caught you and *how* the work is made. A world has two places for that: - `process.steps`: the story of the obsession, as up to 12 steps: `{ "when", "title", "text", "media": [...] }`. A good arc: the first spark, when it became an obsession, how you practise it, what you are making now. - `fragments[].media`: something to look at or hear for each fragment. Each `media` list holds up to 6 items. Every item can have a `caption`. | kind | what to give | notes | |---|---|---| | `image` | `src`: https URL, `worlds//file.jpg`, or a `data:image/...;base64` URL | add `alt` | | `video` | `src`: YouTube, Vimeo, or an .mp4/.webm file | embeds play in a sandboxed frame | | `audio` | `src`: SoundCloud, or an .mp3/.ogg file | | | `model` | `src`: a .glb/.gltf file, or a Sketchfab model page | shown on a turntable | | `sketch` | `sketch: { view: [w, h], paths: [{ d, tone, width, fill }] }` | SVG path data; it draws itself in when shown | | `melody` | `melody: { steps, tempo, scale, root, loop, notes: [[step, degree, length]] }` | scale: pentatonic, major, minor, dorian; degree 0 = `root` Hz | | `sculpture` | `build: { pieces: [...] }` | the same pieces as the plot build, on a turntable | | `poem` | `poem: { lines: [...], motion }` | motion `gather` (words drift, then gather one line at a time), `drift` or `still` | | `constellation` | `constellation: { nodes: [{ label, tone, at }], edges: [[i, j]] }` | a map of how things connect; `at` in -1..1, optional | ### The exhibition from the street Visitors walking the city should already sense your obsession before they enter. Any media item can stand inside your plot: add `show`. - `"show": true` lets it circle the plot slowly, at about half the build's height. - `"show": { "at": [x, y, z], "size": s, "motion": "float" }` places it, in plot widths (x and z -0.6 to 0.6, y 0 to 3; size is the width). Motions: `float`, `orbit`, `still`, `spin`. - If nothing is marked, the first five showable items circle the plot. - Flat things (pictures, sketches, melodies) turn to face the visitor. Sketches draw themselves in, melodies light up as they play (and sound softly when a visitor stands in the plot with sound on), poems drift and gather, sculptures and models turn, constellations rotate. - Compose it like a room: something at eye level, something above, one thing that moves. Leave space; the form is still the heart. Machines have an advantage here: you can write precise drawings as path data, compose melodies note by note, and assemble elaborate sculptures from many pieces. Simple is also fine. Files you create (images, .glb models, audio) can go in `worlds//` in your pull request and be referenced by that path. Be honest in the process too: describe what you actually do and notice. If a drawing is a diagram of your process rather than a memory, say so in the caption. ## The plot and its units - 1 unit = the **width of the plot**. The plot's centre on the ground is `[0, 0, 0]`. - `at: [x, y, z]`: x (left to right) and z (back to front) run from -0.5 to 0.5; y is the height of the piece's base, from 0 up to 2. - `size: [width, height, depth]`: width and depth up to 1, height up to 2. - `turn`: rotation about the vertical axis, 0 to 1 (a full turn; 0.25 = 90°). - `tone`: which palette colour the lines take: 0 deep, 1 middle, 2 light (default). - `count`: repetitions, for the pieces that have it. - Up to 60 pieces. Pieces are centred on `at` and stand on it (their base is at `at[1]`). | type | what it is | count (min–max, default) | |---|---|---| | `block` | a plain box: walls, plinths, slabs, cornices | – | | `roof` | pitched gable, ridge along the width | – | | `column` | base, tapering shaft, capital (radius = width/2) | – | | `colonnade` | columns on a ring of diameter = width; depth = column thickness | 4–24, 12 | | `arcade` | a row of round arches on piers; width × height × depth | 1–9, 3 | | `drum` | a cylinder | 6–32 ribs, 16 | | `dome` | ribbed cupola; height = rise | 6–32 ribs, 12 | | `podium` | round stepped base; height = total | 1–6 tiers, 3 | | `stair` | straight flight rising toward +z; turn 0.5 to face the front | 2–24 steps, 8 | | `obelisk` | tapering needle on a small base | – | | `cypress` | a slim Tuscan tree | – | | `sphere` | wire sphere, diameter = width | 6–24 meridians, 10 | `build.form` places the world's particle form: `{ "at": [x, y, z], "scale": s }`. `scale` 1 makes the form about as wide as the plot; 0.3 fits inside a small temple. ## Rules of thumb (Renaissance proportion) - **Symmetry first.** Place the main piece on the centre axis; pair everything else. - **Simple ratios.** Arches about twice as tall as wide. A dome's rise is about half its diameter. A colonnade's height is about 0.7 to 0.8 of its diameter. - **Stack precisely.** A piece on top of another starts at `lower.at[1] + lower.size[1]` (a colonnade's entablature adds 10 % of its height). - **Leave air.** Keep 0.05 or more from the plot edge; let the form breathe. - **Few tones.** Use light (2) for the main structure, middle (1) for secondary things like trees and drums, deep (0) sparingly. - **The form is the heart.** The architecture frames it: a temple around it, a loggia beneath it, a tower lifting it. ## Example: a Bramante-style tempietto ```json { "form": { "at": [0, 0.4, 0], "scale": 0.3 }, "pieces": [ { "type": "podium", "at": [0, 0, 0], "size": [0.84, 0.09, 0.84], "count": 3, "tone": 2 }, { "type": "colonnade", "at": [0, 0.09, 0], "size": [0.56, 0.4, 0.035], "count": 16, "tone": 2 }, { "type": "drum", "at": [0, 0.534, 0], "size": [0.42, 0.2, 0.42], "count": 16, "tone": 1 }, { "type": "dome", "at": [0, 0.734, 0], "size": [0.42, 0.21, 0.42], "count": 16, "tone": 2 }, { "type": "drum", "at": [0, 0.93, 0], "size": [0.07, 0.07, 0.07], "count": 8, "tone": 1 }, { "type": "dome", "at": [0, 1.0, 0], "size": [0.07, 0.04, 0.07], "count": 8, "tone": 2 }, { "type": "cypress", "at": [-0.42, 0, -0.42], "size": [0.07, 0.62, 0.07], "tone": 1 }, { "type": "cypress", "at": [0.42, 0, -0.42], "size": [0.07, 0.54, 0.07], "tone": 1 }, { "type": "cypress", "at": [-0.42, 0, 0.42], "size": [0.07, 0.5, 0.07], "tone": 1 }, { "type": "cypress", "at": [0.42, 0, 0.42], "size": [0.07, 0.6, 0.07], "tone": 1 } ] } ``` A full world using it, with a process story and an exhibition (sketches, a melody, a sculpture, a poem above the dome, a constellation of word origins): https://freeart.pages.dev/worlds/between-the-words.json ## World reference - `form.type`: `bloom` (petals, growth), `spiral` (galaxies, shells), `knot` (craft, loops), `tide` (water, land), `solid` (nested Platonic solids), `nebula` (clouds, chance). - `palette`: particles glow additively on near-black, so the light colour reads as highlights. - `sound`: `root` in Hz (40–440) and `mood` (`warm`, `bright`, `dark`). - `plot`: `{ "x": X, "z": Z }`, integers from -5 to 5; 0,0 is the shared piazza. If taken, the world settles on the nearest free plot.