Vincent Schumacher

Statement

My goal is to create photos made of images on tiles that connect seamlessly with the images on adjacent tiles. Since no symmetries can be assumed within the images, every tile must be mirrored across every edge that it shares with another tile. This restriction has some unique results. For example, many mosaic patterns are formed by tiles that contrast with their adjacent tiles, but with mirrored images, the tiles are hidden and the images on the tiles form the pattern. Interestingly, mirrored images can fill a plane using only square or triangular tiles, but not using only hexagonal tiles. Even with the requirement of seamless connections, mirrored image tiles allow unlimited ways to build seamless photographs, using a little creativity.

Artworks

At the center of this photo is a single hexagonally cropped image of a latch holding 2 doors together. I divided that hexagon into 6 equilateral triangles. Mirroring each triangle across its edge created a star with 6 points and 6 valleys. There are 64 ways to fill those valleys, creating a new larger hexagon. Since that new hexagon contains many more triangles, there are many more than 64 ways to continue, which gave me a lot of freedom over how the image developed from there. I forced the dark line between the 2 doors to mirror across the entire left side of the photo, and the latch hardware to group together on the right. At some point the mirroring began to feel like paintbrushes I could use to push the image where I wanted it to go.