Theme: Arrangement of Lines

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Folks,

Greetings. Still on a random break from photography, but my day job work continues with image work. This is something that is an offshoot of my work... a wholly synthetic image of just straight lines.



Hmm. How to explain this. The entire image is made up of a tile consisting of straight evenly spaced horizontal lines (originally made with Powerpoint). Okay there's no easy way to say this so the not so simple explanation is to say this tile is rotated, cut and placed according to a guiding image to form the image above. This was done twice for the OP, once with dark lines and a second time with light gray lines.

The lighter lines you might notice are somewhat radial to the center point. If you are of a mind, you might find the one horizontal gray line starting in the center of the left edge and running to the image center. If you run your eye along this line (look closely) you will notice that black line segments change their angle in a regular way.

Finally, the original data is just the distance from the center point ;-)... The radial lines lie in the gradient direction. The black lines change angle ( 0 to 360 degrees) based on distance from center.

I've always liked how distance from a point turns into something line a yin-yang symbol.

Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

Amazing stuff, here. It looks 3-dimensional. And I like the mathematics of it. Thanks for the good explanation.

[Hazel Grant]

At first I wondered how this was a photo, but then your explanation opened my eyes. A lot of work. Nice symmetry. Thanks.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Michael, this is amazing. I could look at it for hours! It's 3 dimensional and seems to move when you look at it for very long. I love all the directions that it seems to wander in. Thanks for the explanation (I even kind of understand it.)

[Nancy Bell]

Very cool! I really like the spiral within the image! You could add psychedelic color to this and it would make a great poster for the college students here in Colorado, now that marijuana can be purchased for recreation !

[Diane Miller]

Fascinating! You must have a very interesting day job. Would you share some insight into your artistic insight and skills?

PS -- pot can be purchased for recreational use here in CA too -- just ask you kids, and tell them not to be too obvious about it.

[gary ellwein]

I'm stone sober and have been playing with this image for several minutes. If you wiggle the image up and down it produces an optical illusion of movement. Thanks for sharing.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis, Hazel, Cheryl, Nancy, Diane, Gary,

Thanks much for your comments. Adding color gave me an idea for to add to the explanation. The image 32 circular bands (distance contours from the center) below each band is colored with a separate hue (in hue order). If you pick one band, say yellow, and follow it around the circle you will find the angle of the dark lines is the same, while the lighter lines change with respect to the angle to the center.



Diane, I've worked for NASA for over 25 years with just about half that time devoted to what's called scientific visualization. The work involves analysis of large numerical data usually from computer simulations (fluid dynamics over such things as the Space Shuttle, blood flow through an artificial heart, colliding galaxies) by transforming the numerical data into images. So, these images posted here are "visualizations" of the distance from the center point. Color, texture, contrast, structure, applied to the creation of synthetic images based on scientific data. Current work is to do this inside Photoshop plugins ;-).

I developed an interest in digital photography 7-8 years ago after my wife gave me a p&s & Photoshop saying you might find this interesting. They do a lot of the same sort of work as you do but with photographs.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Diane Miller]

Now THIS one gets my attention!!

I'm re-reading James Gleick's "Chaos" (from many years ago) and trying (again) to digest phase space and attractors and a few other concepts. A challenge to get beyond my very rusty years of calculus. Sounds like maybe that's what you're doing?

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Now THIS one gets my attention!!

I'm re-reading James Gleick's "Chaos" (from many years ago) and trying (again) to digest phase space and attractors and a few other concepts. A challenge to get beyond my very rusty years of calculus. Sounds like maybe that's what you're doing?

Vector calculus, topology, dynamical systems... yep, all that great stuff. Beautiful mathematics.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Michael, I'll have to ponder this awhile. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into your work life - it's fascinating.

[Diane Miller]

It amazes me that a field of mathematics (nonlinear dynamics) is what seems to me, anyway, to be a field of scientific research. When I was growing up there was science and there was math. The former was easy....

[Kerry Perkins]

Very cool Michael! I used to work on image processing hardware and one of our favorite things to do was write equations into the graphics engine, causing it to display the functions as shapes and colors. Very nice!

[Nancy Bell]

Your color explanation is great and I can see the direction of the lines within a color. Plus the rings of colors against the lines make a cool image!

[Anita Bower]

I like both versions. But, surprisingly, I like the first one best. It is excellent. Makes me dizzy.