Roger Antonsen

Statement

I have previously worked on visualizations of card shuffling and permutations, and I wanted to extend this to 3D. This is one attempt to do so. My motivation is to make these invisible structures visible and create elegant and interesting art in the process. I find the process of experimenting with mathematical structures through computer code both rewarding and exciting, and I am deeply fascinated with how code can be used to visualize, and make tangible, mathematical concepts, and especially with how complexity can arise from simple assumptions. This work was done while I was in residence at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics in Providence, RI, during the Illustrating Mathematics program.

Artworks

This 3D printed object illustrates two perfect out-shuffles with thirty-six cards and six piles. Each curve, from top to bottom, represents a single card, and after two perfect out-shuffles, the cards are restored to the original order. This was made with Processing and Rhino, and then produced by Shapeways.