Perlin Noise x Morié Effect Plots - ITP Camp Update

During ITP camp I improved my process of creating these plots experimenting with a wide variety of pens and vinyl cutter settings. I created bigger and more interesting plots and worked a lot on creating a floating glass shadow box frame to display them in. They are currently being shot by a photographer but here are some mediocre photos of what I have been working on.

 Perlin Noise x Morié Effect Plots

Perlin noise is an type of gradient noise / algorithm invented by NYU’s own Kevin Perlin in 1983. We were lucky enough to have him as a guest speaker last semester for applications class. The algorithm allows visual effects artists to increase the appearance of realism in computer graphics. It is a way of generating pseudo random numbers that are closely related so that you can randomly generate smoother waves, clouds, water patterns etc.

In my case, I found a program written by an artist named Daniel Catt which allows you to set parameters to generate Perlin noise spirals. I stated messing around with the program and discovered that if you create two spirals with very little noise, and place one on top of the other, you can get a very three dimensional moire effect pattern.

The images below show the UI of the program and the overlapping results in illustrator. The output of the program is a svg with 20,000+ points, you define how many segments you want but they only appear to impact rendering in the browser not in the svg. In order to import into silhouette studio, I had to simply the path in illustrator to 2000 points. More points than this, silhouette studio crashes, as is, it takes minutes to generate the cut path. This summer, I plan to rewrite the program myself in processing so that it is more responsive and you can simulate vinyl cutter output before wasting time and materials on cutting. I am eager to try plotting with better paper and better pens. I ordered a pen attachment and some architectural technical pens. The pens that came with the Cameo are pretty bad. They often bleed across the paper before the first path is drawn (you can see the artifacts in lots of the photos below), other pens run out of ink right away, overall the color selection is mostly neon and sparkly colors, none of the primary colors worked (bled or didn’t draw at all).