Taijitwo Twist — Utmost Extremes Edition #1

This is the Utmost Extremes version of Taijitwo Twist, named for the caption of the infobox picture on the Wikipedia article for “Taijitu”, that being "Diagram of the Utmost Extremes", wherein the center of the design is cast red. These designs (this and its Monochrome sibling) incorporate an old design of Taijitu, with concentric arcs, and at the center a modern design many people think of when Yin and Yang are mentioned, with the interlocking shapes similar to the Japanese tomoe and magatama. Two taijitu, hence Taijitwo. The arcs of the old design, however, are not uniformly arranged about a central axis and the thicknesses don’t match from side to side. It ends up resembling a circular maze to a varying degree, which, I suppose, can represent the paths we end up taking in life. Sometimes we feel shifted towards Yin or towards Yang, some periods in our lives are darker and some are lighter. While the effort of striving for balance is commendable, Taoism teaches that the point of perfection in life (analogous to Buddhism’s nirvana) is by living in a state of Wu Wei, acting by not acting—letting the Tao guide one’s behavior, as opposed to one’s desires or society’s expectations. So, one might say that if we allow the Tao to show us the path through the maze, we will eventually come to the bliss of the Taiji’s perfect balance. One might also say that the semicircle-stacking method I used is a metaphor for ascending towards a higher state of being. Take all this with a grain of salt; I’m still learning about the Tao, and still quite a novice. For y’all, I’ve included “$fx.minter” so that any of this collection you purchase will have design(s) determined in part by your wallet address, in tandem with the hash.

I used p5.js for this work. The design is generated by three random sequences: one for the angles from one pair of arcs (each half of a circle) to the next, and these arcs are formed by overlaying progressively smaller filled arcs—black and white semicircles. The other two sequences determines the thicknesses of the apparent arcs, with each arc in a pair using a different sequence. So far as the pushed matrix is rotating from one pair of arcs to the next, the arcs on each side of the matrix independent of the rotation use the same sequence, i.e. the left uses one sequence and the right uses the other. Also, the apparent left and right arcs change color from pair to pair, so that each pair has one black and one white. The Modern Taijitu at the center involves opposite-color rings against the halves to increase their definition in the image, and the symbol itself is a layering of same-radius filled arcs and circles. This differs from the Monochrome version only in the fill colors used for this center symbol.