Algorithmic worlds

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2009-09-06 A book about death

2009-09-03 Euler and Twombly

2009-09-01 A new gigapixel picture

2009-08-31 Fractals in traditional art

2009-08-23 Gigapixel panorama

2009-08-21 Yellowstone's abstract art

2009-08-20 Pollock & fractals? A hoax.

2009-08-04 Kunstformen der Natur

2009-08-02 The Fibonacci fractal

2009-07-29 The art of Kris Kuksi

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August 21st 2009

Yellowstone's abstract art

I wanted to visit Yellowstone and its thermal features for a long time. Now that I live in the US, I didn't miss the occasion. It's a unique place on Earth.

But actually the thermal features make you feel like you're not on Earth anymore. Yellowstone is a "hotspot", namely a place where the Earth's crust is thin and the magma close to the surface. While there is no volcanism there for now, the magma is close enough to heat and vaporize the underground water, what yield the various thermal features (geysers, hot springs, fumeroles, mud pots).

The waters in "hot" spring are really hot, often near the boiling point (as painfully experienced by some tourists or bisons...). However, there is a gradient of temperature between the center and the edge of the pool. Near the edge, the water is still much too hot to sustain any complex life, yet it hosts a special class of bacteria, called extremophiles, which adapted to the very high temperatures and the harsh chemical properties of the water. These bacteria, having no predators, flourish in thick layers, bacterial mats, which are often brightly colored. Different species of bacteria are adapted to different temperatures, and display different colors. This explains the unbelievable colors of Grand Prismatic Spring and other smaller hot springs in Yellowstone.

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone, no color tweak in Photoshop...

In the center of the pool, nothing can live, and the blue tones are due to the preferred diffusion of this color by water. Closer to the edge, the temperature goes down, and a first species of bacteria appears, producing yellow mats. Depending of the depth of the pool, these yellow mats looks green or yellow. Even closer to the edge, where the temperature is cooler (still something like 50 degrees Celcius...) a second species of bacteria flourish, producing orange mats and completing the spectrum of Grand Prismatic.

These bacterial mats and various geological features produce marvelous abstract patterns. I've collected a few of them in a Picasa galery.

Bacterial mat, Yellowstone.

These pictures are quite inspiring, because I really lack patterns which produce organic shapes. By their nature, they are the most difficult to produce with algorithms and geometrical formulas. Except from the ubiquituous Perlin noise function, the currently implemented "organic" patterns in my algorithm are Voronoi, Fixed edges and Martin (and its derivatives). Lengthening this list a bit would be nice. It remains to figure out how to turn the picture above into an algorithm...