John Shier and Doug Dunham

Statement

Artists have employed metamorphosis or transitions to patterns in order to obtain interesting aesthetic results. Perhaps the best known examples are M.C. Escher's "Metamorphosis" I, II, and III. We use this transformation idea to create new images with computer technology. Continuous random functions are the basis for our calculations, and these are then modified by continuous transitions, from 0 to 1 for example. In order to render an image in a reasonable amount of time, the random functions should be calculated efficiently. The use of Perlin noise is one solution to this problem. These functions can be used to vary color, position, orientation, and other geometric properties of subimages from left to right or top to bottom.

Artworks

One of our ideas concerns transitions from order to disorder. Going linearly from one to the other can seem jarring, so we use modifying functions that are 0 for some interval, then sweep up to 1 for an equal interval. This is the form of all the modifying functions in this image. The orientations of the squares start out upright and the positions are regular, then they become more random on the right. Similarly, the edges start out straight then become curved. There are two sets of paths through 3-dimensional RGB color space, the paths of one set start on the left at white and the other at black. Then they proceed toward random mid-range colors, so that at the right the color distributions of the two sets become the same.