Hello Modulo by Nat Sarkissian

My intention with this piece was to create something that looked simultaneously human and computerized.

The human element is the hand drawn style. The movement of the strokes, the variance of the density of the simulated particles of color, and inaccuracy of the grid are a few of the things I worked with to make this feel as though a human drew it.

The computerized element is the complexity and intricacy of the patterns. As each grid cell is created, its color is determined by taking the index of the cell, which has various definitions in this code, modulo some other number.

Modulo is not a difficult operator to understand (it simply returns the remainder of a division), but it is not typically taught amongst the four basic operators, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Because of that, it's typically not intuitive.

As I developed this work, it felt oddly like building a relationship with modulo. It kept surprising me with complex and unpredictable patterns. I introduced it to more familiar concepts like noise, and trigonometric functions, and continued to see new patterns.

My hope is that you will see a little bit of modulo's personality in this work, and consider getting to know this awkward fifth wheel of the arithmetic operators.

Nat Sarkissian


To view or download at higher resolutions, add &mag=n to the end of the URL to multiply the current resolution by n.