Issue 16
On the cover

On the cover: Some assembly required

Trippy brain massages from Sam Palmer’s artwork on the front of Issue 16

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9 November 2022

Sam Palmer is a creator of mathematical digital art, which he shares through Twitter, on Reddit and on his website. He uses the open source sketching software Processing to generate both static and animated graphics with beautiful geometric themes. Well, a lot of people think they’re beautiful; some people actually find some of his gifs a little unsettling:

Reddit comments: "This is trippy, I love it" and "It's like a brain massage"

Reddit comments: "Excuse me, please don't do that to my eyes" and "Imma go throw up in my closet"

The Chalkdust issue 16 cover art in particular was inspired by a transitional animation of falling Koch snowflakes, in a piece named Some assembly required:

The Koch snowflake is a particularly beautiful famous shape and is one example of the group of mathematical objects known as fractals. Fractals are self-similar objects, and have really interesting mathematical properties, including non-integer dimension. For the particular example of the Koch snowflake, this shape has infinite perimeter but finite area. Other popular fractals include Sierpinski’s triangle, the Menger sponge, and the Mandelbrot set.

The Koch snowflake shape is built up iteratively by starting from an equilateral triangle, and adding smaller equilateral triangles (specifically a ninth of the area of the previous triangle added) in the middle of each side of the shape:

Koch snowflake generation

Fancy trying out the software? The Processing programming language is based on Java, and when you open it up for the first time there are links to some great tutorials and templates. It’s available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, so you have no excuse.

Need inspiration for a title for your artwork? How about The Koch Ness Monster, Kochodile Rock or even BBC News at Ten O’Koch

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