Silk - abstract line art poster

SERIES D // Flux

Silk

€39

An amber thread through a blue night - the warmth of sound in cold space.

Colour
Format
Size

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About the piece

Hundreds of threads of light woven into a single ribbon. A signal twisting through space like silk. Perlin noise explained

Drawn in code from seed
00009
Series
Flux
Variant
Column
Palette
Ember
Sizing

30 × 40 cm (12 × 16 in) or 45 × 60 cm (18 × 24 in), with a white border around the picture. Framed prints come in a black or natural wood frame (12 mm wide) with plexiglass, ready to hang.

Print & materials

Fine art matte paper (200 gsm) at 300 DPI, made to order. Every size is rendered natively - lines stay razor-sharp even at the largest size.

Shipping & payment

Free shipping worldwide. Every print is made to order within a few business days and shipped worldwide, packed to arrive flawless. You see the delivery estimate for your country when you order.

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Fine art paper

200 gsm enhanced matte

Printed on thick uncoated art paper at 300 DPI. Rich colour, razor-sharp lines, no glare.

Real wood frames

Black or natural wood

Wooden frame, 22 mm deep, with plexiglass that is lighter and safer than glass. Arrives ready to hang.

Made to order

Free shipping worldwide

Each print is made for you when you order and packed to arrive flawless, wherever you are.

The story

A silkworm spins its cocoon from a single unbroken thread, up to a kilometre long. This ribbon has 150 threads and a slower signal than Aurora, so it twists less.

MATHEMATICS

The maths behind the picture

Every piece is computed, not drawn. These are the real equations and numbers from the program that made this exact piece.

Read the guide: Perlin noise explained →
Equations
P(t, φ) = C(t) + h(t)·sin φ·(cos θ(t)·N + 0.35·sin θ(t)·T)θ(t) = 2π·k·t + θ₀ + 1.4·noise(3t)h(t) = w₀ + w₁·s(t)^1.1s(t) = Σₖ aₖ·(½ + ½·sin(2π·fₖ·t + φₖ)) · Σⱼ bⱼ·e^(−((t − cⱼ)/wⱼ)²)
Parameters
Ribbons
1
Lines
150
Twists
2.094
Meander
2.649
Signal frequencies
5.833 · 2.016 · 5.569 · 3.581
Swells
0.451±0.089 · 0.086±0.143
Perlin noise
4 octaves · falloff 0.5
Measured while drawing
Samples
105,150
Signal peak (t)
0.41
What these numbers mean

The form is driven by a sound signal made of the frequencies 5.833 · 2.016 · 5.569 · 3.581. Where the signal is louder, the structure grows further.

Nature is neither perfectly smooth nor completely random: clouds, mountains and waves are somewhere in between. In 1983 Ken Perlin invented a noise that looks like nature: a smooth function that gives random but gentle changes. The program adds four layers (octaves) of this noise, each half as strong and twice as fine as the last. That is what gives the lines life, so they don't look like they were drawn with a ruler.

HISTORY

Where this idea comes from

  1. 1847

    Jean Frenet (1847) and Joseph Serret (1851) independently describe how orientation changes along a curve in space: tangent, normal and binormal.

  2. 1960s

    Early computer artists such as Frieder Nake and Georg Nees use plotters to draw lines defined by equations.

  3. today

    Parametric surfaces are the basis of 3D graphics, from cars to animation. Here one such surface becomes a ribbon of light.

Perlin noise

  1. 1982

    Ken Perlin works on the effects for the film Tron and is frustrated that computer images look too "machine-like".

  2. 1983

    Perlin invents his noise and publishes it in 1985 at SIGGRAPH, in the paper "An Image Synthesizer".

  3. 1997

    Perlin receives an Academy Award for Technical Achievement: his noise becomes the basis of smoke, fire and cloud textures in film.

  4. 2001

    Perlin publishes an improved version and "simplex" noise. Today games, films and programmer art all over the world use it.

In nature

The ribbons twist into helices, like the tendrils of beans and vines. In 1865 Charles Darwin wrote a whole paper on how climbing plants coil.