AsianScientist (Jan. 6, 2017) – Science and art have always been linked: from DaVinci’s iconic “Vitruvian Man,” showing the mathematical proportions of the human body, to Fibonacci’s famous sequence, explaining the branching of trees and the perfect ratios for art and architecture. The stunning images shown here were created by Hamid Naderi Yeganeh, a mathematical artist who uses formulas as his paintbrush and a computer as his canvas.
Yeganeh’s process involves mathematical functions from trigonometry, but treated in a much more complicated way. Starting with a simple shape, he commands it to repeat itself according to a specific formula. The computer then generates thousands of possibilities that fit the input commands, and what emerges are the stunning images and animations shown here.
A graduate of the University of Qom in Iran, the artist cites one of the influences for his abstract work as the tessellating tiles that decorate the city’s many mosques. The likeness between them can be clearly seen in the symmetry and patterns of his work.
Occasionally, a computer-generated image will bear a striking resemblance to a real world object or animal. This method has been described as “fishing with a large net,” as there is no way to predict what will be generated, and any similarity is essentially random. However, more recently Yeganeh has been using a slightly different mathematical method to purposely create things like birds and butterflies. No longer randomly generated, but deliberately crafting the appearance with tweaks to the formula.
Yeganeh publishes all of his work on his website along with the computer functions he used to create it. By making it available to the public, he is hoping that everyone will be able to appreciate and share in what he calls the “power of mathematics.”
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Hamid Naderi Yeganeh.
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