The Nature of Code

3 Oscillation

Trigonometry is a sine of the times.

—Anonymous

Gala by Bridget Riley, 1974; acrylic on canvas, 159.7 × 159.7 cm

Bridget Riley, a celebrated British artist, was a driving force behind the Op Art movement of the 1960s. Her work features geometric patterns that challenge the viewer’s perceptions and evoke feelings of movement or vibration. Her 1974 piece Gala showcases a series of curvilinear forms that ripple across the canvas, evoking the natural rhythm of the sine wave.

In Chapters 1 and 2, I carefully worked out an object-oriented structure to animate a shape in a p5.js canvas, using a vector to represent position, velocity, and ...