Art goes on and New Domain

Finally I have a domain for the last.fm application, so I can handle the potentially enormous traffic :-)
This is the address

And I have included the voronoi design there, here is a screenshot from the latest version.
Probably I should also write a table with intructions as well.

I have also experimented with Voronoi diagrams with nonliears generators, the results can be quite beautiful.
The "nonlinear algorithmic geometry " lecture I may do this semester will be dealing also with Voronoi diagrams, so it was quite a pleasant surprize that my personal interest meet my academic ones.

Computer Art

Ah, art is fun. The last week I have spent probably more time playing with java and photoshop(all the images in this blog are created by me) and looking at optical illusion books and pictures, than doing my job at Fraunhofer. I will describe some of the stuff I did. These are just first steps in a vast new domain, but already there is some eyecandy :-)







First, I looked at some interesting web sites about fractals. It manages to explain them quite nicely using complex math. In a few hours i wrote my own java code to do this. (there are programs like ultrafractal, but it was not intuitive enough for me). I am facinated by the concept of the fractals: infinite copies of the self twisting and fillling the universe. If I study more carefully the theory i may even find other interesting fractals, this is a very rich domain for mathematicians, and a nice stimulus to get into complex math.

I also learned about voronoi diagrams.
They are easy, yet have interesting properties if one goes deeper (geometry and diskrete math needed here for amazing results). It passes perfectly for my last.fm visualization, as can be seen from the screenshot. I have written the voronoi engine in java, now remains just to experiment with different point generators.






I also played some more with the polygons from last week. I did the poster for Elena'S birthday. I think it was a quite nice present, the picture here is 4x4 smaller copy of it, printed on A2 quality photopaper. I also experimented with impossible figures, like this classical triangle with unending edge. The good old Escher was againg quite inspiring for me, his tiles are perfect filling of any polygons.






So much art for now, i will try visiting tomorrow some weird lecture "nonlinear algorithmic geometry to see if also brings me some new ideas.

Op Art

I was this friday on this exhibition in frankfurt. Op art means optical art , or art meant to confuse the senses. There were some really good installations with mirrors, for example a room with glass floor and ceiling which gives illusion that there are multiple floors with people beneath it.

I got really excited by some posters giving an illuion of warping space. It remings me a bit of the works of Escher, the favorite artist of most mathematicians :-) Now I am trying to do something like this myself. Here are my first tries, i will post more later.