John Critchett

Professor of Accounting and Finance
School of Business, Madonna University
Livonia, Michigan, USA

I work in algorithmic digital art, primarily cellular automata, spirolaterals, and polyiamond tesselations. The finished product will be a digital archival print. Algorithmic art involves the use of predetermined formulas or procedures to create a design. A process of discovery is involved as the design "evolves." The artist does not necessarily know what the final product will look like. There is still room, however, for the artist to add personal touches to the work in the form of embellishments, and color patterns. The final piece, therefore, may combine the processes of discovery and creation in a way that has never been visualized before.

9 X 10 Irregular Hexagon
9 X 10 Irregular Hexagon
31 x 31 cm
digital archival print
2015

This work is a spirolateral design where the length of succeeding line segments follows the formula 3X (mod 10), and the turning angle is 60 degrees. Three parallelograms were added to complete the irregular hexagon. Each unique closed shape was then assigned a different color. The resulting design shows a unique partition of an irregular 9 X 10 hexagon that was created using an algorithmic approach, rather than by using separate design elements.