The Thoughtscapes Project

At present The Thoughtscapes is a small programme, which converts written text into colourful patterns. I made the code with Processing, a programming language developed by B. Fry and C. Reas from MIT. Its basis is Java but if compared to traditional Java some of its elements are simpler. The texts are diary like records, written by the author and other two people (Dharma Karmismaki Crew) over a period of three months.The patterns are inspired by nature. In particular by the order in which seeds in seed pods are distributed. Each “seed” of the pattern represents a letter of the text. The position of the “spiral” is not random. It depends on the geographic location of the place where the text was written.The following presentation provides more detailed description of the above, and informs about the research I have undertaken during the development of the Thoughtscape’s code.

Thoughtscapes –Cartographic Projection

The geographic coordinates of the place where a diary record was written represent the central point of a spiral pattern.Any place on the Earth can be depicted by its geographic coordinates. To project these onto 2D plane, some method of cartographic projection needs to be used. After researching different methods, I have decided to use Plate Caree projection. This method, known already in Antic Greece, is a very simple cartographic method, where the horizontal coordinate (X) is the longitude and the vertical coordinate (Y) the latitude. Today, the method is widely used in computer generated maps because of its easy conversion into pixels. It can be described by a simple mathematical formulae (which is another reason why I decided to use it)x = k (λ - λ0) y = k (φ - φ0), where k is the scale factor, which allows to choose the scale of the map. Λ is the longitude, λ0 is the longitude of a place, which we decided to be a central point of our map. Φ is the latitude and φ0 the latitude of the map’s central point.

Thoughtscapes –Cartographic Projection

1.Plate Caree projection of the world 2.The same map zoomed into area which is

currently presented by the Thoughtscape project

Thoughtscapes –Cartographic Projection

I had to take into account the coordinate system used by Processing. All northern latitudes and western longitudes need to have a negative (-) value if we are to follow the traditional mapping conventions, where north is on the top of the map. Since the 0 coordinate is placed in the left top corner of the screen, it is necessary to add the value of the half of the screen size to have the 0 coordinate in the middle of the screen.In the Processing code, conversion of geographical into cartesian coordinates would be generally written as this: float X =(λ - λ0)*k+width/2; float Y =-(φ - φ0)*k+height/2;Values of λ, φ are different for each particular place. Values φ0,λ0 and k are set the same for the whole image (map).

Thoughtscapes-”Golden Flower” Pattern

To find the form into which the text should be converted, I was looking for inspiration in the nature. The way seeds in flower pods are placed seemed to me as the perfect one for my purpose.“When a plant such as a sunflower grows, it produces seeds at the centre of the flower and these push the other seeds outward. Each seed settles into a location that turns out to have a specific constant angle of rotation relative to the previous seed. It is this rotating seed placement that creates the spiralling patterns in the seed pod.” (Michael Naylor(2002) Golden, √2, and π Flowers: A Spiral Story)If the angle of rotation were the Golden Ratio (0.618034), a very large amount of seeds would be evenly distributed within a coherent, round shape. It is the most even distribution possible. If any other, even very similar number were used here, the seeds would get either clustered or too loose on the edges of the spiral . How incredibly perfect is the nature!

Thoughtscapes-”Golden Flower” Pattern

Above: sun flower seed pod –Golden Ratio in natureTop right angle of rotation between the seeds is

0.618034 (Golden Ratio) Bottom right angle of rotation between the seeds is 0.618

Thoughtscapes-”Golden Flower” Pattern

Following research was concerned with finding mathematical definition of “golden” seed distribution. According to Michael Naylor ´s formulae it is as follows:r = √[k] θ = k αWhere r is the radial distance, θ is the angle from the zero-degree line, k is the seed number (starting with 1 at the centre) and α is the angle between any two seeds (which is the constant “Golden Ratio” 0.618034). This description defines the location of any seed in polar coordinates.In Processing, polar coordinates need to be converted into Cartesian ones. This is done by the following formulae:X = r cos(θ)Y = r sin(α)Thanks to advice of Evan Raskob, we have written the following Processing code. This loop draws one blue “spiral” with 100 seeds in the centre of the screen: for (ctr=1; ctr<100; ctr++){ r=sqrt(ctr); theta=ctr*(0.618*TWO_PI); x=r*cos(theta)*4+width/2; y=r*sin(theta)*4+height/2;

fill(300,ctr,120); ellipse(x,y,6,6);}

Thoughtscapes-Letters and Colours

It may be claimed that individual letters (characters) of the text do not have any meaning by themselves, that the meaning is held only by the groups of letters - by the words. On contrary, there exist very traditional and complex systems, which work with hidden meaning of individual letters. Such as Kaballah (which is concerned with Hebrew alphabet) or Gemantria-Numerology. These methods assign numeric values to the letters which than hold very complex secondary level of meaning. Taking the above into consideration, I have decided not to go into any more complicated method of text analysis, and so to assign colour values to the individual characters of the text.The aim of the following research was to find existing methods where letters would have assigned colour values. It led into colour-letter synesthesia, a rare condition where a person would involuntarily perceive letters as colours. It has been researched, for example, by the MIT department of psychology. But this is not a logically definable system, since every individual in this condition would see different colour for each letter. Therefore, I have decided to create my own synesthetic perception of alphabet. Later I discovered that the aesthetic effect would be better if one colour were assigned to a group of letters. I used ancient Numerology structures where letters are divided into groups as follows:1 = A, J, S 2 = B, K, T 3 = C, L, U4 = D, M, V 5 = E, N, W 6 = F, O, X7 = G, P, Y 8 = H, Q, Z 9 = I, R

Thoughtscapes-Letters and Colours

Decision of colour for each letter group was based on seven colours of the rainbow, which are often assigned to seven energetic centres of our body – the chakras. I have added two additional colours for letter group “8” and “9”.

number

colour letters

1 red A, J,S

2 orange B,K,T,

3 yellow C, L, U,

4 green D, M, V

5 Blue E, N, W

6 Indigo F, O, X

7

8

9

violet

magenda

tyrquise

G, P, Y

H, Q, Z

I, R

Thoughtscapes-Programming

For a person with a rather intuitive and artistic mind, to write a code means to use a completely new concept of thinking. Adopting that and actually learning the syntax and grammar of a programming language was for me a very challenging, but exciting experience.Thanks to advices of Evan Raskob and a wide Internet based research, I have understand the very basic structure of Processing - Java, learnt to use some of its elements and wrote the actual Thoughtscapes code. I was working in, as called in Processing, continuous mode.“This mode provides a setup() structure that is run once when the program begins and a draw() structure which by default continually loops through the code inside.” Elements I finally used in the code are: void setup(), size(), background(), noStroke(), noLoop(), void draw(), float, int, color, fill(), ellipse(), sqrt(), cos(), sin() and its structure is constructed with; for(), array[] and String . And others (such as classes , objects and two dimentional arrays), I experimented with, but didn’t use.I am intending to extend my knowledge of programming to be able to complete the project.

The Thoughtscape Project- array structured code-it represents all the text and places

recorded in Dharma Karmismaki crew’s diaries.

The Thoughtscape Project- each “seed” has colour according to the letter which it represents but every spiral pattern is drawn by separate loop and only some of the text

and places are present here

Thoughtscapes-References

Processinghttp://www.processing.org/

Cartographic Projections:http://www.earthtools.org/http://www.3dsoftware.com/Cartography/USGS/MapProjections/Cylindrical/PlateCarree/http://www.answers.com/topic/plate-carr-e-projectionhttp://www.radicalcartography.net/?projectionrefhttp://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapProj/CartIndex/cartIndex.html

Spirals-Golden Ratio-seed distribution-Fibbonci numbers

http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.htmlhttp://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_09_02_02.htmlhttp://mathworld.wolfram.com/LogarithmicSpiral.html

Letters and colourshttp://otherthings.com/uw/syn/http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html