Daniel Brown – On Growth and Form
Friday, 17 October 2008
Daniel Brown – Flowers Construction Kit
Daniel Brown well known for his excellent work back in the days when Director was king of browserspace interactivity with his eclectic collection of interactive toys at the famous Noodlebox – now archived at his play-create site. Back then much of the web was composed of black pages with flickering stars, decorated with animated gifs of flames and luminescence text. Noodlebox was a major breath of fresh air.
Recently Daniel has uploaded images of his ‘Flowers Construction Kit’ where beautifully crafted AS3 plants and petals combine a touch of synthetic surrealism with succulent colours, symmetries and geometries. This kind of algorithmic botany has been appearing in Daniels work for quite sometime, check out the recent SAF project where the flowers are computationally nurtured in real-time. The ‘On growth and Form’ set documents his ‘non-commissioned’ flower projects from 1999 to the present, and it’s a real treat to the eye.
On Growth and Form, by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, is one of the first books ever published to tackle the subject of morphogenesis, the science of the formation of cells, tissues, shells, plants and other living organisms from a mathematical point of view.
‘The harmony of the world is made manifest in form and number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of natural philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty’ – D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
related:
Lia’s Spirographic Florals
Algorithmic Botany
Superformula 3D
No. 1 — October 20th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Very lovely! They are reminiscent of Ernst Haeckel’s protozoan radiolaria series, such as the large marine actinopods.
No. 2 — October 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Yeah they have that kind of radiolarian geometry and symmetry. They also reminded me a bit of William Lathams old work – something about the rendering.