ROBOTCANDY / FIELD STUDIES

AN ATLAS OF SMALL RULES

Living lines

Three specimens. The rules beneath their forms.

← → change specimen · space to pause

SPECIMEN 01 / Nautilus pompilius

Nautilus.

01 / 03
Preparing the specimen

Paper, pigment, glass and light. You can choose another specimen while this plate loads.

The nautilus is not a golden spiral.

Math Animals by Sanju Sunny / r3al1tym ↗
01

The spiral sets the rule.

An equiangular spiral grows by a factor of 3.00 each turn. The pencil continues beyond the aperture to show the rule.

NOTES FROM THE MARGIN

A rule becomes
a living line.

Living Lines is a specimen cabinet by RobotCandy. Choose a shell, sea fan or dragonfly. Follow its construction, pause the growth and compare the trials printed on the card.

The shell follows an equiangular spiral. The sea fan grows toward free space and fuses into a net. Voronoi cells divide the dragonfly wings. These are mathematical models; the sea fan fusion rule and the wing cell model are proposals.

The specimens, construction drawings and materials come from Math Animals by Sanju Sunny / r3al1tym ↗. The full renderer is adapted from that project, under the MIT License. The pinned source version is retained for comparison.

Interface text set in Fraunces by Undercase Type, licensed under the SIL Open Font License. No sound, camera or account needed.