V i r t u a l E n v i r o n m e n t sD a r c y Z e l e n k oM o d u l e 1 - I d e a t i o n

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B e l o u s o v - Z h a b o t i n i s k yr e a c t i o n

A Belousov-Zhabotinisky (BZ) reaction can be described as the self organisation of spirals on a two-dimensional plane1 caused by a temporally oscillating chemical reac-tion.

What drew my interest to the BZ reaction was that unlike other patterns evident in nature, the extrapolations* of the BZ reaction can be actively observed over a reasonably small period of time compared with that of rock formations or the creation of a tree.

Over the summer I had began to start experimenting with the programming language Processing and in my research in to the BZ reaction I found that there had been work done into developing an algorithm in Procesing that deals with the temporal nature of the BZ reation.

Trying to wrap my head around this complex reaction it was necessary to use some of the skills employed by kadinsky’s students in their analytic drawing. The above images illustrate the simplification of the image from page 2 followed by my process of re-building the reaction at different times back to it’s original form.

It is important to note that this image was taken from a model created in Processing and not of the actual reaction taking place. The reasoning behind this was that I wanted to develop my understanding of the BZ reaction as it was a lot to wrap ones head around.

1A Simple Model of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction From First Principles by Alasdair Turner,http://www.aac.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/processing/samples/bzr.pdf

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This is an image of the BZ-reaction taking place inside a petri dish (hence the circular shape). This im-age is a much simplified example of the reaction and the behavior of the emerging spirals amongst one anoth-er can be observed easier.

The simplication of the spirals is evident in the first image fol-lowed by a vectorisation of the spiral expansion in the direc-tion of the points/areas of interference that can be observed in the third analytical drawing. The final image is an abstraction of the third analytical draw-ing extrapolating and connecting some of the interferance points/lines to create a series of triangular and quadrilateral forms. The shapes with the most sides are the areas of the drawing that show the most interference taking place

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This drawing was created by tracing two of the spi-rals from the original image above one another and drawing vertical lines to illus-trate the symmetrical scale and angle that these spirals share

Recipe for simulating a Belousov-Zhbotinsky reaction

1. Define origin points2. Spirals of equal scale emanate from the above points at an equal rate3. As spirals grow continuously bigger they will start to interfer with each other, like ripples in a pond4. Constructive/deconstructive interference will lead to the creation of new curves5. Go back to 2

When Paul bought up the example of the home maker mak-ing goulash; one way not using technology which was labour intensive and took longer, and another using modern technol-ogy which was less labour intensive and was much quicker we were meant to think that the second way was probably better. I disagree, to some extent at least.I’ll take the example of my mum and her Thermomix. A Ther-momix is an appliance that functions as a regular mixer and food processor but it has the added feature of being able to apply heat at the same time. To a busy person like my mum who prepares many meals during the day while being pressed for time this is a great time saver. She often brags to me about being able to cook singapore noodles in about 15 minutes. Given a wok and three times as long, I could produce the same thing and in my opinion (sorry mum), my result would be better. I would argue this because during the longer time it takes to make, I have more time to find and play with the balance of sweet & sour, salty spicey and bitter that are paramount fla-vors when it comes to asian cooking. I think that a balance should be found between the two meth-ods of creating a dish. A way that takes advantage of the benefits of both methods.

In this example perhaps a compromise would be still using my trusty wok but using my mum’s blender to help make a curry paste to avoid getting chili all over my hands and save some time cutting onions.

Response to Lecture 1

The results would be a tastier dish with less to clean up at the end. Along the way we would have had to worry less about chopping and more about the overall composition while tak-ing less time in the kitchen.

While it seems like I’ve talked about cookery for the past para-graph what I’m trying to illustrate is a compromise between modern technolgy and an ‘acoustic’ approach to design. Taking advantage of the computer’s speed and revising each iterated created and tweaking it so the final product is much more refined.

Architecturally, this is the basic premise that designers using parametric architecture have been facing in recent years. It has changed the way they design allowing them more time to spend on the logic and thinking behind what their comput-ers can create at a much faster rate to make sure that the synergy created is at it’s full potential and not just an excuse to knock off early and go to the pub.

An un-related real-world example of this process in action is the way some producers are creating music. Apollo Brown is an American ‘beat maker’ who uses often uses samples taken from vinyl and combines them with drum beats in what the in-dustry considers an out-dated program to create his work1. He describes his mish-mash process of beat making as a journey saying “... if you use software or hardware or whatever you use, I don’t care about the path you take, as long as you get to the destination. As long as the destination is a good one.”2

1Apollo Brown Makes a Beat, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6jDgC-wY0A

2 Interview: Apollo Brown by Andrew Hickey,http://www.acclaimmag.com/music/interview-apollo-brown/

As briefly mentioned earlier, an algorithm for the BZ reaction has been created using the Processing programming lan-guage (see left). A screengrab of this was used by Paul in the first lecture.To be able to manipulate this recipe would for me take quite some time, but a basic understanding of it’s working is pos-sible. The main reason I’ve included it is because at it’s core, it is still just a recipe. However the chef in this instance is a computer, not a person. It was designed to play up to the computer’s strengths of being able to the same thing over and over with consistant precision.

float [][][] a;float [][][] b;float [][][] c; int p = 0, q = 1; void setup(){ size(400,400); colorMode(HSB,1.0); a = new float [width][height][2]; b = new float [width][height][2]; c = new float [width][height][2]; for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) { a[x][y][p] = random(0.0,1.0); b[x][y][p] = random(0.0,1.0); c[x][y][p] = random(0.0,1.0); set(x,y,color(0.5,0.7,a[x][y][p])); } }}void draw(){ for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) { float c_a = 0.0; float c_b = 0.0; float c_c = 0.0; for (int i = x - 1; i <= x+1; i++) { for (int j = y - 1; j <= y+1; j++) { c_a += a[(i+width)%width][(j+height)%height][p]; c_b += b[(i+width)%width][(j+height)%height][p]; c_c += c[(i+width)%width][(j+height)%height][p]; } } c_a /= 9.0; c_b /= 9.0; c_c /= 9.0; // adjust these values to alter behaviour a[x][y][q] = constrain(c_a + c_a * (c_b - c_c), 0, 1); b[x][y][q] = constrain(c_b + c_b * (c_c - c_a), 0, 1); c[x][y][q] = constrain(c_c + c_c * (c_a - c_b), 0, 1); set(x,y,color(0.5,0.7,a[x][y][q])); } } if (p == 0) { p = 1; q = 0; } else { p = 0; q = 1; }}

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Response to readings

Poling, Clark (1987): Analytical Drawing In Kandisky’s Teach-ing at the Bauhaus Rizzoli, New York, pp. 107-122

In my opinion this reading had too many words that really took away from some of the work of Kadinsky’s students that was talked about. I enjoyed viewing each student’s interpre-tation of Kadinsky’s three stage analytical approach of:

Simplify, Analyse, Transform.

In reading about this technique, seeing examples and then attempting my own I was able to appreciate the subjectivity of Analytical Drawing. It also helped me achieve a balace between being critical and appreciative of my own work. It is definitely a skill I will use in future.

Tooling / Aranda, Lasch. New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 2006

This reading helped me analyse my pattern according to the different methods it talks about. In one form or another, I could apply them to the BZ reaction and it helped me iden-tify the symmetry in my pattern I had trouble putting my finger on