floors & ceilings

At its core, this process boils down to a sophisticated set of tricks designed to deceive our perception—making us see things that simply aren't there. Op Art pushed these deceptive capabilities even further, using geometric patterns not to create realistic space but to generate optical illusions that make surfaces appear to move, vibrate, or shift before our eyes. By systematically deforming and manipulating geometric patterns, Op artists revealed how easily our visual processing can be hijacked and manipulated.

"floors & ceilings" draws inspiration from both this movement and M.C. Escher's fascination with twisted perspectives and spatial paradoxes. Each iteration presents abstract structures that may or may not exist as coherent three-dimensional forms, wrapped in moving geometric patterns that pulse and shift across the surface. These geometric constructions hover in the ambiguous territory between flat pattern and spatial illusion. As a generative project, "floors & ceilings" employs a modular construction method where structures are built by assembling two-dimensional hexagonal tiles. These hexagonal units serve as the fundamental building blocks, creating complex forms through their systematic arrangement and combination. The moving patterns that animate these structures were created using a custom design tool developed specifically for this project, then used as a basis for further algorithmic manipulation. Through code, these patterns are deformed and transformed, with both the base patterns and their transformations selected randomly by the generative system, ensuring each output presents a unique puzzle.

Viewers are invited to project their own spatial understanding onto these moving patterns and structures, actively participating in the creation of meaning while simultaneously unraveling the very geometric illusions that make such interpretation possible. The work creates a feedback loop between perception and recognition, where the act of trying to "solve" the spatial puzzle reveals the unreliable nature of the geometric tricks we've learned to trust.