Identity Motion

And here it is, the final thesis post.

Here is a short video of my thesis, titled “Identity Motion,” in action.

Identity Motion is a screen-based moving mosaic built in C++ with the OpenFrameworks library. The aesthetics of the piece are inspired by Islamic tile designs.

The mosaic is constructed from three types of tiles: equilateral triangles, squares, and regular hexagons. Each of the pieces moves in space according to the rotations that define its symmetry. In math, the symmetry of an object is described by all the ways it can be rotated in space and still look the same though its orientation differs. The video below demonstrates the basic motions for the tiles, which I used for my project. (Mathematically speaking, there are other motions, but they all consist of combinations of these ones, as well as the identity motion, in which the shape remains in the same position.)

I created the OBJ files for the shape tiles in Google SketchUp. I made the floral designs in Photoshop using scans of my own drawings. These elements were then imported into my C++ program and used as the basis for the rotating tiles.

View the code for this project here.

Here is a video of my thesis presentation at ITP: