As a design enthusiast, I have had the privilege of exploring various design technologies during my tenure at Parsons. Below are some of the projects I have undertaken that have helped sharpen my design skills, passion and dedication towards my creative practice.
Pattern-making is an ancient and culturally diverse practice. For this project I wanted to look back into my own cultural history as a starting point to create an optical illusion that may appreciate, critique, or simply sit with the culture.
I was inspired by Mandala which is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Asian cultures. It can be understood in two different ways: externally as a visual representation of the universe or internally as a guide for several practices that take place in many Asian traditions, including meditation. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the belief is that by entering the mandala and proceeding towards its center, you are guided through the cosmic process of transforming the universe from one of suffering into one of joy and happiness. I wanted to take Mandala ahead as its practice resonates with me the most, so I decided to make my mandala sketch with circles to give it my own touch.
The shown illusion is interactive because the rotation and scale of the circles are controlled by the mouse position.
The illusion is created by drawing multiple circles with various sizes, colours, and rotations.
The draw() function is called repeatedly to draw the illusion. Inside the draw() function, the background colour is set to a light blue shade. The canvas is then translated to the center.
Two variables, paintScale and paintRotate, are assigned values based on the mouse position using the map() function. The scale() and rotate() functions are then called with these variables, which affect the size and rotation of the circles.
The code then draws multiple circles with different colors, sizes, and shapes using various push() and pop() functions to manipulate the transformations. The customShape functions draw the custom shapes used in the illusion.
