Thursday, June 14, 2007

Math is Beautiful!


This picture is of a print I bought at the Smoky Hill River Festival. You might wonder why I was attracted to this form of art. Well, besides the vibrant color combination, this design presents digital imagery derived from mathematics, created by a computer program written by Scott Burns, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois (Urbana). From his pamphlet Design by Algorithm: "The organic shapes and patterns exist naturally in the math, but significant computation effort is required to reveal them visually. No hand drawing or coloring is performed; manipulation of the artwork is achieved through selection and modification of the mapping functions, orbit traps, and color maps implemented in the computer program." Listed on the back of each design is the text of the computer program that created the image. The joke is...you know you're a geek if you think the artwork is on the back of the print. If you're interested in seeing other beautiful work by Scott Burns, take a look at his website: www. designbyalgorithm.com.

3 comments:

  1. I was particularly fascinated with images 62,67, and 76. I also found the image of your print very interesting. The rotation put a completely different perspective on it. Thanks for sharing.
    We still missed seeing you guys. :(
    grannyof9

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  2. We missed seeing you too! We should have planned for one more day in Kansas. Our luggage was finally delivered yesterday afternoon, and nothing was missing. Yay!

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  3. Good and unusual news about your luggage. :)
    grannyof9

    ReplyDelete