TEARS, Generative Art with Exponential Distortions of Sine Waves

Tears 1 

The word tears is a homograph, a word with one spelling that has two or more meanings and pronunciations.  As a noun, tears can mean some rips, e.g. some tears in a piece of fabric or tears can refer to an act of weeping.   For describing this generative art, both of these definitions describe the appearance of these pieces.

The art created in this project was a surprise to me and fun to develop.    In making generative art, I the human, create a system, a set of rules, and collaborate with a computer to create art together.  My designs include some randomness which makes each composition different.  This artwork was more mathematical in its bones than previous projects.  I started with the humble sine wave and played with the amplitude and frequency until I found a range that created a pleasing and soothing wave to my eye, like the surface of water that is not entirely calm but also not very choppy.  I then played with the parameters of amplitude and frequency to define ranges that still conveyed these pleasant properties but allowed some variation.  Next, I created a series of waves at the same time by creating random unique y intercepts, which would give a series of horizontal sine waves, which is basically the background or medium in this canvas.

I created a set of random points and the waves interact with those points causing distortions in the waves.  In this case, there is basically an exponential increase (y increases downward from the left upper corner) in the y value  of the sine wave as a function of its proximity to one of the random points (I truncate the exponential increase above a certain arbitrary threshold).  This transforms the work from a series of bland sine waves into something exciting and unexpected creating the tears.  One of the dramatic aspects of this change is when a tear projects below the body of sine waves it's as if it is stepping out of the constraints of its own world and into another world.  

The tears.py script can be downloaded from my google drive.

Tears 2

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