Tiffany Inglis
I am a computer scientist with a passion for puzzles and drawing. My research in computer graphics involves developing algorithms for creating styles of art, including pixel art and Op Art. In addition to creating mathematical art, I also do a bit of pencil/charcoal sketching, comic drawing, and jewellery design (via 3D modelling) on the side.
This sculpture is an homage to the age-old joke that a topologist cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee mug, since the two spaces are homeomorphic. The doughnut-cup is a torus of genus one; it is compact, orientable, finite, and connected (but not simply).
This piece is based on my paper on animating Op Art. A line-based Op Art composition can be created using two tiles, each containing two diagonal line segments. In order to extend the idea to an animation, each line segment must travel in one of two directions orthogonal to itself. It can be shown that any Op Art composition constructed with these tiles can be made into a seamless animation. In this composition, motion is simulated by arranging colours to induce peripheral drift illusion, and can be seen easily by focusing on your peripheral vision while blinking rapidly.