Harmonic Warping

Harmonic Warping of Blue Wash
This image is a tiling based on harmonic warping operations. These operations take a source image and compress it to show the infinite tiling of the source image within a finite space.

Basic Description

This image is an infinite tiling. If you look closely at the edges of the image, you can see that the tiles become smaller and smaller and seem to fade into the edges. The border of the image is infinite so that the tiling continues unendingly and the tiles become eternally smaller.

The source image used for this tiling is another image that is mathematically interesting and is also featured on this website. See Blue Wash for more information about how the source image was created.

A More Mathematical Explanation

Note: understanding of this explanation requires: *Single Variable Calculus

To create this image, a harmonic warping operation was used to map the infinite tiling of the source [...]

To create this image, a harmonic warping operation was used to map the infinite tiling of the source image onto a finite plane. This operation essentially took the entire infinite Euclidean plane and squashed it into a rectangular. This type of operation can be called a distance compressing warp.

Harmonic Warping Equation

The equation used to perform the harmonic warp is show in a graph to the right and is as follows:

$d(x) = 1 - \frac{1}{1+x}$
$d(y) = 1 - \frac{1}{1+y}$

You can see that for both of these equations, as x and y go to infinity, d(x) and d(y) both approach a limit of 1.

$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}d(x) = 1 - \frac{1}{1+x}$

$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}d(x) = 1 - \frac{1}{1+\infty}$

$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}d(x) = 1 - \frac{1}{\infty}$

$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}d(x) = 1 - 0$

$\lim_{x \rightarrow \infty}d(x) = 1$

• mapping (x,y) from Euclidean plane unto (d(x),d(y)) in rectangle

Polar Harmonic Warping

Link to Polar Coordinates

Four Infinite Poles

Link to Hyperbolic Geometry

Big table of rectangular, polar, cardinal 4 poles for both flag!

 Saint Andrew's Flag Saint George's Flag Original Flag Rectangular Tiling Polar Tiling Four Infinite Poles Tiling

Teaching Materials

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About the Creator of this Image

Paul Cockshott is a computer scientist and a reader at the University of Glasgow. The various math images featured on this page were originally produced for his research.

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