Atoll of Diffraction

Presenting my series Atoll of Diffraction in its entirety!

Digital art inspired by and based on physics, generated by custom, hand-crafted code.

These images are low resolution versions – the original images are 6000 pixels wide.

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Diffraction patterns are mounted on cylindrical screens, emanating from two imaginary diffraction gratings, positioned back-to-back in the center.

These structures embody a cross-over of what you see with your eyes – colors and peaks of different intensity – and what exact mathematical calculations yield: diffraction curves for gratings with a few slits, weighted according to the intensity of the blackbody radiation of the sun.

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Each line of the digital image is the function that represents intensity of diffracted light (of that specific color) over the angle. So, if you would really use a cylindrical screen embracing diffraction gratings at the center of the structure, you would see light of the highest intensity at the peaks.

I said gratings – plural – as I silently “doubled” the zero to 90 degrees range to create an atoll-like circle, instead of just a semi-circular arc. You could say, you place two diffraction gratings in the center of the structure and hit each of them with white light, whose rays come from opposite direction.

I hope my images would also speak for themselves. Appreciating the math and the physics could be a bonus, an add-on, but it should not be required to “understand” the art. Everybody appreciates rainbows … or so I hope!

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The Atoll of Diffraction is floating in a no man’s sea between science and art. It is built from plain lines without thickness or depth on purpose, evoking memories of sober scientific illustrations. Yet, these innocuous lines cause chaos and induce impossible shadows, patterns, artefacts.

Two twisted ribbons, flapping and flopping along semi-circles, are glued together to form a virtual coral atoll. Voyagers are orbiting the atoll, flying above it, diving underneath it. They recognize foreign worlds.

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I wanted to use simple lines in threejs, so they are “as thin as possible”. Challenges: Putting enough lines on the screen to create something colorful and bright, but not totally overloading my GPU (so still allowing me to pan and zoom easily) and not creating digital images with enormous file sizes. Using enough pixels for printing without diluting the figure as line thickness does not scale with the size of the canvas. It was difficult as accidentally I had hit a sweet spot with my very first series of diffraction art (Ribbon of Diffraction) – in terms of number of lines and how thick they appeared. However, I wanted more pixels now!

I am using the exact math of diffraction as dictated by physics, so I could not “enrich” the image with spots of higher line density for aesthetic reasons. I allowed myself only to change reasonable parameters of the hypothetical diffraction grating used – in terms of nanometers of the width and distance of the slits. This one called Double Star Gate uses the iconic double slit. To soften the height of the peaks (not to have peaks of equal height for all colors) I weighted them with the intensity of blackbody radiation. So, the temperature of the hypothetical sun generating the “white” light that goes into the slits is another parameter… but finally I settled at about the sun’s true temperature.

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Example of a metal print – aluminum dibond with matt finish (local printshop)

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Blog posts, reflecting on each of the images:

Stellar Corona

Peek through the Peaks

After the Encounter

Diffraction Patterns for Everyone! (Double Star Gate)

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