Category: Art
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The artist M.C. Escher drew many lovely tilings, which he called “regular divisions of the plane”. He worked hard to ensure that his tilings were of lifelike animal forms such as birds and fish. He filled notebooks with hand-drawn sketches of tilings, many of which later found their way into his woodcuts. If you’d like…
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At least year’s Bridges Conference in Stockholm, I attended a short presentation by Susan Goldstine about “self-diagramming lace”. As motivation for the new work she was presenting, Susan referenced her paper from the year before on what she calls “symmetry samplers”. Samplers are an old tradition in fibre arts. A symmetry sampler combines small swatches…
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Here’s the second of two new espresso cups (read about the other one). The concept is simple: slice through the bottom of the cup and the handle at an angle, so that the cup looks like it’s sinking into the table. I think I can say with some confidence that one of the direct inspirations…
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During the holidays at the end of 2017, I had a bit of time to return to my occasional hobby of 3D printing. I figured I would design a couple of new espresso cups. I always seem to come back to 3D printed porcelain cups. I suppose it’s a nice design space: the final form…
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Anybody who has attended a Bridges conference in past ten years will be familiar with the work of Rinus Roelofs. His talks always offer an entertaining contrast: stunning and inspiring ideas in the intersection of geometry and art, balanced with his humble, low-key delivery. It was also Rinus who suggested that I try Rhino3D for…
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This term, I’m once again teaching CS 106, a second-level introductory programming course with a focus on art and data visualization. The course is taught using Processing, which provides a fun and accessible (though flawed) environment for art-focused novice programmers. The most recent lecture includes a discussion on drawing graphs, and I thought it would be…
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In 1989 I attended Shad Valley, a one-month Canadian summer program for high school students. I spent a month living on the UBC campus. Basically it was Nerd Camp, though perhaps with a more diverse range of interests and talents than you might expect from the nerd stereotype, and with a definite entrepreneurial bent. It…
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Earlier this year, at a local coffee shop, I noticed a flyer on the wall with a call for artist submissions for an upcoming show in Halton Hills. The topic of the show was Altered Books. I had never experimented with the artform of altered books before, though I had seen great examples online. I…
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I’ve been having fun experimenting with interesting visual patterns that emerge when multiple points are moved around hypocycloids. I ended up writing a Bridges conference paper on the topic, but the animated quality of the results is so crucial that it seemed absolutely necessary to create a web page to showcase the results. I had…
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Oh he is so quick On his feet. He is reading The #WallStreetJournal. This term, I’m teaching an introductory computer science course for students in Waterloo’s Global Business and Digital Arts program. We’re using Processing, a fun environment for learning programming, and for simple programming tasks related to visual art and design. Early in the…
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I was commissioned to create an Islamic geometric design to serve as a prop on the set of an Austrian production of the play Disgraced.
