Tessellations

June 17, 2005 9:45 PM

Tessellations are mathematically created images. Trompe L'oeil geometry that is a visual cousin to surrealism , visual games and mosaics.
posted by nickyskye (12 comments total)

Previously, on Metafilter....
No, this is NOT a doublepost callout; same topic, different links
posted by anastasiav at 11:00 PM on June 17, 2005

Thanks nickyskye. Sublime stuff. Too bad the trompe l'oeil paintings weren't bigger - it's a little hard to mesh with the magic. There's contemporary trompe l'oeil works around too. Thanks for the other links anastasiav - I was enamoured with Escherisms when I was young. They still hit the sweet spot.
posted by peacay at 1:49 AM on June 18, 2005

I'm not sure that there's an inherent relationship between tesselations and surrealism, though one certainly exists in the work of Escher.

The stuff at the 'visual games' link was vile, but the trompe l'oeil work was sublime.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:42 AM on June 18, 2005

This was much cooler than I expected. Great post! BTW, some of them are animated gifs which could tile nicely as a background on a site, while others are vector based flash so if you right click and zoom things still look amazing (but bigger!).
posted by furtive at 6:36 AM on June 18, 2005

The bird one reminds me of an Escher-print necktie I haven't worn since the late 1980s.
posted by alumshubby at 8:00 AM on June 18, 2005

I think the optical illusion aspect of tessellations connect them with surrealism's reality warping and adds an element of playful symmetry. Thanks peacay for the amazing the trompe l'oeil link. Here's one to make your own tessellations online.
posted by nickyskye at 8:14 AM on June 18, 2005

There's an interesting story about an amateur, Marjorie Rice (PDF article) who, messing around at home, discovered four of The 14 Different Types of Convex Pentagons that Tile the Plane.
posted by Zurishaddai at 8:25 AM on June 18, 2005

Yes, Zurishaddai that geometry is way cool, it's interesting to
examine the aesthetics of
symmetry in tangible objects or conceptually as curious.

There is a sublime geometry in these paintings by Nicholas Roerich
and mesmerizing beauty in animated 3-D
math. Some of the language of mathematical graphics is charmingly silly, such as Apollonian Gasket or Witch of Agnesi.
posted by nickyskye at 10:45 AM on June 18, 2005

Ghost Diagrams creates patterns from tiles on a square or hexagonal grid. Neat, but needs Python and GTK to run.
posted by jepler at 5:04 PM on June 18, 2005

Thanks, nickyskye - I'm a big fan of tessellations, but I hadn't seen some of these. Lots of fun.
posted by taz at 4:49 AM on June 19, 2005

And don't forget Truchet tiling - aah but I see you've found wolfram - I just stumbled across this page. (oh, that 'make your own tesselations' was good value) I'm much more enamored with the art than than the mathematical gooeyness of it all
posted by peacay at 5:58 AM on June 19, 2005

Wonderful links! Thanks, nickyskye!
posted by Quietgal at 10:48 AM on June 19, 2005