Flash Mathographics

While I was in Singapore I found a cool book that talks about various Math graphics theories called Mathographics. It also contains sample code written in BASIC. On the flight home I started translating some of these into AS3. The only bad part about the book is that the author leaves a lot of the work to you when it comes to trying to reproduce his graphics. Maybe I’m just spoiled by Flash books where you always have full source code available. Despite that I had a great time building some cool looking graphics, especially from the section regarding spirals.

The images above are just a sampling of the graphics I was able to create. You can download a ZIP file containing both the FLA and SWF files. By modifying the symbols used to draw the shapes you can create some really wild effects. The example below is one of my favorites and is an example of a daisy using Fermat’s spiral formula. Click on the image below to see an animated version.

This is definitely a nice book if you want to get more into generative math art. I’m surprised I haven’t seen more books like this.

Lee


Commentary

  1. hebchop says:

    awesome thanks Lee! Mucho kudos go out to any author willing to share code. Another good book featuring a lot of the usual suspects is this; http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590594290

    It’s about time they came out with another (as3?) edition isn’t it?

  2. Fern says:

    Great stuff! THX Lee :)

  3. Willem says:

    Hey, this is superb information. Thank you so much.
    It reminds me of a mention made on artfromcode.com of another obscure book from the ancient past, which proved very interesting, too.
    Great stuff.

  4. jerry says:

    good for study~ thanks you for your share

  5. Andrea says:

    Good staff Lee. Thank you!

  6. polyGeek says:

    Thanks for the tip. I bought the book. Too bad Amazon.com doesn’t sell time. I need to buy some to read this book now. :-)

  7. Shoom says:

    Great! How hard would it be to add some animation to it?

  8. Joris says:

    Very good find..I was looking for something like this for a while! Thanks

  9. Anton says:

    Thanks for the info! Cool stuff!

  10. Lawrie says:

    Nice work Lee.
    I’m a big fan of the book “Flash Math Creativity” mentioned above. I read it a couple of years ago and ended up making this – http://lawriecape.co.uk/mathflash/content.html
    (Which seems to run far too fast in FP10!)
    and this -
    http://lawriecape.co.uk/mathgame/

  11. Daniel says:

    Looks very interesting, thanks for the tip Lee!

  12. Jim Almeida says:

    Funny I was just going to post the Flash Math Creativity comment – guess hebchop beat me to it…

    Here is the link to Flash Math Creativity 1 & 2 incase anyone is interested though. Great books!!

    http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590591852
    http://www.friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590594290

    Nice work Lee -

  13. Cool book, and the similar results Amazon brings up are quite interesting as well.

    I’ve started tinkering with Geometry a bit in Processing lately:

    http://flash.quietroot.org/labs/processing/rotorelief/

    Thanks for the link, good stuff.

  14. Richard Morey says:

    I played around with some of these FLAs and made a three frame movie so that you can see the spirals being drawn. If anyone wants a copy send m an e-mail: rwmorey71[at]hotmail.com.

    Rich

  15. Exciting to see other explore recursion in other ways! Tasty stuff.

    Here is a way to bring ANY graphic into flash and control its recursion attributes.

    Examples:
    http://www.recursiveidea.com/CYBER/IDEAS/Recursion_Excursion/flash/SCREENSHOTS/fav/favs.htm

    Flash:
    http://www.recursiveidea.com/CYBER/IDEAS/Recursion_Excursion/flash.htm

    Home:
    http://recursiveidea.com/CYBER/IDEAS/Recursion_Excursion/main_page.htm

  16. KsuKsu says:

    ? ???? ????? ? ????????? ????? ??????????, ?? ? ???? ???? ????????? ? ?????? ????? ? ?????? ???????? ?? ?????????? ????!

  17. Mensah says:

    Thanks, Lee! I saw Natzke’s awesome, AS-based prints this past Summer in Chicago. Truly inspiring! Thanks.

    M

  18. Jawn says:

    I got the book, and I love it! Thanks Lee. I should have fun with this.

  1. [... While I was in Singapore I found a cool book that talks about various Math graphics theories called Mathographics. It also contains sample code written in BASIC. On the flight ...]

  2. [... While I was in Singapore I found a cool book that talks about various Math graphics theories called Mathographics. It also contains sample code written in BASIC. On the flight ...]

  3. [... While I was in Singapore I found a cool book that talks about various Math graphics theories called Mathographics. It also contains sample code written in BASIC. On the flight ...]

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