Tilings

John Baez

December 24, 2008

Here are some pretty pictures of tilings, suitable for computer wallpaper — or just gawking at. They were made by Eric Broug and Greg Egan. I reduced the brightness and saturation of their images, because while bright and colorful pictures are beautiful, they can be visually distracting as computer wallpaper: it becomes hard to spot ones icons! So, some of the more drab, dull-looking patterns below may be best as a background on your computer screen.

Eric Broug

Here are two traditional Islamic tilings rendered by Eric Broug, and made freely available on his beautiful website, though I no longer see them there.

You should use the "tiled" setting if you want to try these as computer wallpaper.

This one makes a hexagonal pattern:

This one makes an octagonal pattern:

Greg Egan

These are quasiperiodic tilings generated by Greg Egan's Tübingen and DeBruijn applets. These applets make beautiful movies of quasiperiodic tilings. It's easy to do screenshots and create your own wallpaper, so these are just a few samples of what's possible. I used Irfanview to modify the images in various ways.

Here you'll see thumbnails; click on them to get bigger images. You should use the "stretch" setting if you want to try these as computer wallpaper. If your monitor has very different proportions than mine, the result may not be pretty.

The following are made using the Tübingen applet unless otherwise specified. Feel free to use them in your own art! Please, however, credit Greg Egan if you do.

These have 5-fold quasisymmetry:

Here are two with 5-fold quasisymmetry made by Egan's DeBruijn applet:

These have 7-fold quasisymmetry:

Here's one with 8-fold quasisymmetry:

Here are two with 8-fold quasisymmetry made by Egan's DeBruijn applet:

These have 9-fold quasisymmetry:

Here's one with 14-fold quasisymmetry, made by Egan's DeBruijn applet:

© 2008 John Baez
baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu

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