Strange Attractors Case Study
Final Image
My first project for Virtual Entertainment uses Processing to visualize a mathematical system called a strange attractor. Strange attractors create a cloud of points based on a quadratic map, a series of letters which the program translates into numbers which control its movement. For example, the final image used the pattern “AMTMNQQXUYGA”.
While there are a huge number of combinations that can be created, most of them seem to move fairly continuously in one direction, and don’t create an interesting pattern. A computer program can figure out which patterns work and which don’t, but luckily my atrophied math skills got a break from having to figure this one out, as other people have already done it.
The basic attractor renders out a cloud of points:
Cloud of Points
I then explored several options for connecting the points, initially with straight lines:
Lines
Then with Curves:
Curves
At the same time, I modified the file to output a PDF, so that everything was in vector and can be scaled to any size.
Finally, I connected all of the points with a continuous spline. Unfortunately, this narrowed my options for which attractors I could use, as it caused several patterns to look pretty lame:
Boring
Finally, I added color, by having processing grab colors out of an image file, resulting in the final image at the beginning of the post. I also ended up with a few other images that I thought were cool.
I also explored some other options for this project, which didn’t turn out badly, but still need some more work.
References
