Yiesheng’s SA2 Processing and Turtle Geometry

For element 1, polar plot, at first, I was just reviewing the slide and looking up details then Van Gogh came to my mind maybe because I saw the upcoming exhibition coming to ABQ. As a result, I Googled “van gogh color palette rgb values” and used one related to the Starry night. I also tried to incoperate Van Gogh in the following way: 1. I used variable radius polar plot to make the swirling stroke of the starry night. 2. I used the “polar rose equation” to make sun flowers along the swirling path. I included interactivity by placing the center of the swirling path at user mouse click. I also tuned various parameter to make the overall image not too empty. At first, I did not use mouse interactivity. But, later, I tried to add repeated swirling strokes as in the Starry Night and found letting user click repeatedly can achieve that.

For element 2, centered Circle, I first recalled using 360gon to approximate circle in the reading assignment. And then I googled how to find the side length of a regular polygon and spend some time to went through the details, for example what angle to put inside the sine function.

For element 3, flower, at first, I got the impression that the round part of an ice cream scoop is a semi-circle. But I soon found out it is not semi-circle. After some reasoning with paper and pen, I refined my google search keyword and found the “endpoint-tangent theorem” and related geometry diagrams. This resulted in my initial version of petal procedure. This version is based on the 360gon and thus when the angle of partial circle is not integer and has some fractional angle, my flower will have gap between the first and last petal. And this is fixed by checking for and then draw the correct fraction of one last side of the 360gon.

For element 4, I explored the following three different kinds of turtle behavior: 1. the Nazca Line style, 2. polygon style, and 3. L System style. I got my design idea when I was buying coffee and saw an hand drawn advertisement for the “Been There Series” Starbucks mugs. That was a Zia with a ripple at the center. I decided to make that into a turtle drawing. I scattered 5 Nazca line style Zia randomly. By Nazca line style, I mean hard coding the movement of the turtle with a parameter to control its size. And I randomly choose what goes inside the circle at the center of the Zia. This is supposed to be a creative space, maybe an latte art, the flowing coffee beans inside a grinder, or even a Japanese rock garden. And in my turtle drawing, these imaginations are represented by: 1. turtle polygon with degree 144 that resembles a star, 2. triangular pattern by varying the size of turtle polygon, 3. circular swirls patterns by varying the angle of turtle polygon, 4. a L System with degree 45 and rule {{“F”, “F++F++F++”}}, 5. a random turtle motion. One of the challenge I faced is to try to understand what is asymmetry and what is symmetry. And I tried to make asymmetry by: 1. randomly varying the length of the rays of the Zia and also draw some random turtle motion.

https://handandmachine.org/classes/computational_fabrication/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/YieshengChenSA2.zip