Optical Illusion

Link: https://editor.p5js.org/koj097/sketches/1MQoMIif-

Description

I made three sketches of flowers, polygons, and scallops, influenced by Korean culture and aesthetics. In the end, I decided to go with a tricolored taegeuk, a Korean national symbol, to use as my pattern. Not only did I choose it because of my Korean heritage, but because of the visual element of the spiral. I thought that would be an interesting symbol to animate, by making a rotating, spiral motion. I first utilized the For Loops and Nested For Loops functions to create the rows and columns of the symbol. I then used the distance function and the if else statement to make the circles spiral in an animation. Lastly, for decoration, I created text that said "spin me" to allude to the animation.

Reflection

This project was quite easy to do at first. I was able to easily follow the loops functions tutorials. I was able to replace the shapes usually used for these functions, and replace it with the symbol I drew in photoshop. However, it no longer became easy after that. I had absolute difficulty to making the circles rotate, and when I tried to, it did it in a way that I completely did not intend. I had to ask in coding questions, and learned from Xin that the distance function can be used. And while the function ended up being integral to my sketch, it was still hard to figure out. Specically, the image in the rotation function. The coordinates were initially just (x, y), but I learned that I had to change it to an actual integer. After that, I was able to experiment with the numbers, get the exact design I wanted, and in the end, felt satisfied by my work. The recontexualization of the tricolored taegeuk has put the symbol into motion. An animated spiral that is quite hypnotizing to look at. Basically puttign a symbol of balance abd turning it onto a spiral animation.

Credits

This project was created based on the Sound Interactive tutorial by Ari Melenciano (@AriCiano) and it remixes never by Everest Pipkin (@everestpipkin), licensed under MIT License 2018.