Truchet tiles
In information visualization and graphic design, Truchet tiles are square tiles decorated with patterns that are not rotationally symmetric. When placed within a square tiling of the plane, they can form varied patterns, and the orientation of each tile can be used to visualize information associated with the tile's position within the tiling.[1]
Truchet tiles were first described in a 1704 memoir by Sébastien Truchet entitled "Memoir sur les Combinaisons", and were popularized in 1987 by Cyril Stanley Smith.[1][2]
Contents
Variations
Contrasting triangles
The tiles originally studied by Truchet use a pattern in which each tile is split into two triangles of contrasting colors. Each such tile has four possible orientations.
Some examples of surface filling made tiling such a pattern.
With a scheme:
With random placement:
Quarter-circles
A second common form of the Truchet tiles, due to Smith (1987), decorates each tile with two quarter-circles connecting the midpoints of adjacent sides. Each such tile has two possible orientations.
We have such a tiling:
This type of tile has also been used in abstract strategy games Trax and the Black Path Game, prior to Smith's work.[1]
Diagonal
A labyrinth can be generated by tiles in the form of a white square with a black diagonal. As with the quarter-circle tiles, each such tile has two orientations.[3] Nick Montfort considers the single line of computer code required to generate such patterns - 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 - to be "a concrete poem, a found poem".[3]
See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Truchet tiles. |
References
External links
- Weisstein, Eric W., "Truchet Tiling", MathWorld.
- Truchet in 2D and 3D: http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/texture_colour/periodic/
- Javascript animation: http://perso.orange.fr/jean-paul.davalan/divers/truchet/truc.html
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