Truchet Towers

Curved Truchet tiling is laid down on a 3D plane forming an imaginary landscape of ripples.

The longest continuous line created by the tiling is removed, cutting a path through the terrain.
This occurs within 3D space and may or may not appear within the confines of the canvas frame,
but most likely will appear.

A tower rises up to wherever a circle is created by the tiling. Driven by the random
tiling, zero or several of these may appear within the frame. Shadows differ in each mint.

In addition to working on decorative tiling, Sébastien Truchet worked on canals and sundials,
forming the inspiration for the exploration of shade and shadow in this work.

Mints will have a variety of earth-tone background colors with each perspective of the scene
slightly different to produce diverse results.

As I researched Sébastien Truchet I learned that he worked with hydraulics and canal design,
as well as sundials. This became the inspiration for my new shading and shadowing technique used
in this piece.

For me this piece evokes a sense of agriculture, and connects me to an imaginary
landscape that could have looked familiar to Truchet in 18th century France.

This work was created with my own javascript, utilizing my polyline path helper library I
maintain at https://github.com/markroland/path-helper.