Phyllotaxis: Maths creates Beauty & Symmetry in Nature + Free Collages & Mood Boards

Last year I started experimenting with mathematical formulas and data algorithms to generate art, specifically using code scripts created in R.

The first time I stumbled upon math art in R was when I saw the phyllotaxis patterns project on DataCamp created by the Mathematician A. Chinchón last year sometime. He maintains an extensive blog Fronkonstin where he regularly publishes new math art projects. He provides all the scripts he uses and encourages his readers to create their own art using these scripts.

I have started to mess around with several of these math art concepts and mashed-up many ideas from around the internet. I am not a mathematician, but I can use R and entertain myself with these scripts to create all sorts of interesting restults. Yes, I am that kind of nerd… LOL!

I have slowly progressed to writing R “art” code completely by myself as well! Those will be featured on the blog in future posts.

Phyllotaxis in Cacti

In botany, phyllotaxis or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem (from Ancient Greek phýllon “leaf” and táxis “arrangement”). Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature.

Some early scientists—notably, Leonardo da Vinci—made observations of the spiral arrangements of plants. In 1754, Charles Bonnet observed that the spiral phyllotaxis of plants were frequently expressed in both clockwise and counter-clockwise golden ratio series. Mathematical observations of phyllotaxis followed with Karl Friedrich Schimper and his friend Alexander Braun’s 1830 and 1830 work, respectively; Auguste Bravais and his brother Louis connected phyllotaxis ratios to the Fibonacci sequence in 1837.

Wikipedia

Phyllotaxis Collages

I originally created these collages from free photos on Pixabay to sell at my design eShop on Zazzle, but I have since closed my store there as I felt that they were ripping-off our designer community – so I left and started anew on Teepublic. These collages do not vibe with aRtVerse’s reincarnation and thus I made them available here as free design resources!

You can find the Pinterest Collage Board Here! Merry Christmas!

Phyllotaxis Mood Boards

I have also created a mood board for each of the cacti collages – several mood board design resources will be made freely available from Mind Frame Shift for your design inspiration!

You can find the Pinterest Mood Boards Here!

Phyllotaxis Inspired Data Art

Here is a close-up look at the spirals I created using R code and taking inspiration from the colleges! Each of these spirals have up to 1000 individual points!

aRtVerse – An Universe where R, Art & Maths Collides

Finally the whole collection of phyllotactic spirals with single or multiple arms inspired by the different ways in which leaves can arrange on plant stems. These designs are available on various apparel and products from my aRtVerse Teepublic eShop! The spirals were generated with individual points using R code in the Inferno/Volcano (top right), Plasma/Sunset (bottom left) and Viridis/Peacock (bottom right) colour palettes.

You will also notice one of those multi-arm spirals in my aRtVerse and Mind Frame Shift logos as well!

CC-BY-NC 3.0 – Images are free to use for personal and non-commercial projects given attribution to Dr Tanzelle Oberholster

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See More At My aRtVerse Store!

aRtVerse @ Teepublic
ART SCIENCE NATURE

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