binary_trees #24

November, 2022
Little India, Toronto, Canada.

Project Description

The word algorithm brings visions of inscrutable equations with latin symbols that can only be understood by people with acronyms after their names. In reality, algorithms can be simple. Very simple in fact.

This project, "binary_trees", uses a simple two step algorithm to search for a secret number.

For example, to find a secret number between 1 and 100 these are the steps:
Step 1) Pick a number between the lowest number, 1, and the highest number, 100.
Step 2) If the picked number is higher than the secret number, set the new highest number to be the picked number.
Or, if the picked number is lower than the secret number, set the new lowest number to be the picked number.

Repeat Steps 1 and 2 until the secret number is found.

binary_trees repeats hundreds of these searches with each found secret number spawning new searches. Perlin noise, colour selections, arc widths and radii are used to bring a sense of structure to the visual output.

More detail about this project and early development renders can be found in the README.md, README.pdf and test_renders/ folder.

Five Features

1. Aspect ratios:

• Landscape
• Portrait
• Square

2. Seven colour palettes
   The colour palettes are adapted from Mark Rothko paintings as interpreted by Merritt Smith, https://github.com/mmerrittsmith/rothko.

3. Three Organizing Principle Ratios:

• Super Golden Ratio
• PHI
• Golden Angle

4. Number of search trees

5. Maximum Search Space
   This feature determines the size of the largest search space to find the secret number.

Interaction

This piece is dimension agnostic and can be exported to PNG format at several different sizes.

The outputs are not scaled but instead re-rendered at each of the dimensions listed below.

Press t: thumbnail @ 200 x 200
Press s: your current screen size
Press p: print size @ 4800 x 4800 which is 16"@300dpi
Press h: HD4K on the vertical @ 2160 x 2160
Press m: Max size @ 10800 x 10800

Acknowledgements and #fxhashTurnsOne

binary_trees is a (late) contribution to the first anniversary celebration for fxhash. I am very grateful to the developers/admins/organizers and the community that makes fxhash possible.

A portion of the primary sales are split between the Processing Foundation and Tezos for Iran.

And as always, none of this is possible without my family. Thank you the most to KIRH.

Libraries Used for Development

Made with Processing / P5.js
p5.js v1.4.2

License info

See LICENSE.md

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/