Etienne Boulais

Statement

I am a Montreal-based visual artist as well as a PhD student studying fluid mechanics and transformations of space. I am interested in mixing phenomena and the idea of space folding onto itself, and am working to bridge these technical interests with my more traditional work. In the work I submitted, I created digital tilings of 2D space, which are then printed on high-quality paper. These explore the way different mathematical functions fold space to create intricate patterns from simple rules. These maps have value as tools for visualizing functions that have applications in my research, but also hold aesthetic value in themselves. In this image, a map of a dipole flow is tiled using T-shaped tetraminoes, highlighting spiral paths.

Artworks

This is a tiling of 2D space using different colored T-tetrominoes. This tiling is then warped by a dipolar map. The resulting image highlights spiral patterns that begin in one singularity and travel to the other. These spirals are more visible from a distance and when squinting at the picture. This is part of a series of images highlighting how tilings of space can be combined with simple mathematical functions to generate aesthetically pleasing images.