Hello, my name is Nathaniel Filer, and I am in the second year of my CS Master’s at UNM. I enrolled in this class because I was interested in learning something a little more concrete than what I’ve learned in most of my other CS classes thus far. I’ve been interested in 3D modeling for quite some time (as a kid I loved messing around with Blender and GroBoto), so I’m super excited for the content in this course!
The project I have chosen to write about here is one I discovered for the first time several years ago on YouTube: Blooms by John Edmark (http://www.johnedmark.com/#/phi/). John Edmark, who teaches at Stanford University, was researching phyllotaxy (the arrangement of petals or leaves on a plant), and the spirals that are formed by it. He began to create versions of these spiral designs with tiling (using a laser cutter and wood), and found several interesting things:
- each tile of the design was the same shape, but no two tiles were the same size—they got slightly larger as they spiraled outward.
- when he took any one tile from the design, the next biggest tile would be 137.5 degrees (the golden angle) around the design, at the end of one of the other spirals
- when he created a stop motion animation, rotating the design 137.5 degrees each frame, it gave the illusion that the tiles were originating in the center and slowly growing and moving outwards
Using these discoveries, he began to design blooms (as seen in the video above)—3D-printed sculptures that are meant to be spun and strobed at a certain rate, so that you see them every 137.5 degrees. These all give the impression of growing outward or folding inward, and the designs also allow for other transformative effects to be animated. And they all use the same basic spiral pattern observed in plants. I don’t know what software or programming language he used to design the sculptures, but it had to have been something with the potential for mathematical precision! I found John Edmark’s work fascinating because his process was so observational and playful—just noticing and exploring interesting properties and relationships between things, and that his process led him to such an amazing discovery! I’ve also always loved geometry, and his work involves geometry in really exciting ways. Below is a video of a talk describing these things in more detail:
Hi Nathaniel, the design of this model is eye-catching. When they start spinning it, there’s a nice flow, almost like an animation. The use of geometry and angles is impressive, and I can’t wait to learn more about it. I wonder if its possible to recreate that in Rhino?
Hi Nathaniel,
Using nature for inspiration for art and especially computer-generated art is very fascinating. I took a class where we had to research bio-inspired topics, and this one seems to be right in that alley where someone notices the patterns and formations of plants and nature and builds upon that observation. It is really amazing to see how mathematical and complex the things we see on a daily basis, but don’t pay much time to them. I also like your comment of why you wanted to take this class since I know in most cases with CS, we don’t often make physical items or objects that we can interact with, so this class is a breath of fresh air! Thank you for sharing this project!
Absolutely mesmerizing! This is an excellent find, Nathanial. It is a shame though that pieces like this rely on very precise capture framerates to sync up with the rotation speed, as it means you can really only see it properly through a digital recording. It does make me wonder though, if you crank up the speed enough, will the limits of the human eye let us achieve a similar effect, or will it become a blurry mess instead?