No other theme has been popular in Escher's work as the tessellation of the plane. Escher painstakingly studied, reproduced and created some of the most fascinating tessellations to exist. An obsessions since early architecture days, I've always fallen in love with how these regular divisions of the plane make for harmonious art.
Over the past weeks, I've had a special visitor with whom I donned my tourist hat and discovered parts of Seoul I had not made time for yet. We went to different parts of the city and while looking back at my pictures, I realised that I tend to take a lot of photos of tessellations. Here's how I saw some of the iconic destinations at Seoul.
Lotte World Tower
A recent trip to the top of Lotte World Tower led me to go up and down this elevator multiple times, much to the chagrin of my travel companion, who was quite bemused that I'd rather photograph the view from the elevator rather than that of the beautiful, expansive cityscape in front of us.
Gyeongbokgung Palace
The Gyeongbokgung palace is the tourist highlight of Seoul and I'd never made the time to be a tourist. Until now. It is unlike the Lotte World Tower - it is horizontally expansive and low. However, tessellations are aplenty in its grounds.
Noksapyeong Station
Tessellations in my surroundings are not limited to the fifth tallest building in the world and historical monuments. My neighbourhood subway station is Noksapyeong and looking up at its roof gives me little tessellated thrills every time.
Elsewhere around the World
Older Indian middle class homes and restaurants have simple but beautiful tiling patterns. These tiles have been replaced in many establishments with marble for a more clean and modern feel. A house with old tiles always invokes a dash of nostalgia and the urge to take a photo.
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The corner shop near my old home in Bombay had the most satisfying arrangement of nuts. The shopkeeper was always amused that I would photograph his jars every time I came in. I was always amused at how he didn't see why I was obsessed with these tessellated nuts.
Lazy Sunday mornings with some friends. Shireen thinks I'm taking a picture of her but I'm actually photographing the shadow of the window grills on the mosquito net behind her.
Footer credit - @soulturtle
I want to know how he got those beans to stack that way. This may be the greatest magical act of our time.
I asked! He only ever gave me a very secret smile. It's a marvel.
Oh wow this is an awesome post. I love Escher and your photos here are perfect. Can I fractalize these? and do you have more? haha :)
Where is the Goblin King?!
Haha, can't get enough of that amazing gif!!!
Yeah, you can use them! I'd love to see what you do with it. I have tons more but I have to dig into my photo libraries for them. I'll send them across soon.
That's a disturbing image. I just finished doing my taxes. That's exactly what it felt like.
So amazing some of this tesselation is. I am very curious to know how long it takes the shopkeeper in Mumbai to arrange all the nuts like he did. What an incredible and beautiful bunch of jars!
I like the photo you took of the shadow of the gate.
They have wondrous ways of doing these things. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some simple technique that only takes 5 minutes! But then again, I have no clue as to how they do this. The gate was indeed nice. I went from door to door, window to window, just photographing the patterns.
I guess you are probably right... someone out there has figured out a quick way to do that!
Yay! I'm so happy to see this post is getting you some well deserved rewards! Really beautiful pictures indeed, what a fascinating word too... "Tesselation" :D
Thanks!! Yeah, it's always a surprise when you log out, log back in and see numbers that are not under 1$! Haha. I love the way the word sounds too - tess-ell-a-tion!
Such intriguing photos! I've always loved Escher and tessellations. It's really cool that you documented these so well. I see interesting patterns everywhere, but hardly ever photograph them. Those nut jars are a technological marvel! Every photo in here is amazing. More tessellated posts, please!
Yeah those nut jars are marvellous! Funny thing is they're different every time I go because hw obviously sells some and then the arrangement changes.
Yeah, I need to look into all my tessellation pictures! They seem to be popular!
It's funny cause I just mentioned Escher to @soulturtle about a couple days ago... and had never heard of this word tesselation, but here it is again. So cool!
Hey by the way I wanted to know if you got a share of @steembasicincome. I sent them a steem and your name 😁.
Oh really? In what context?! I'd love to know. Tessellations are amazing. Your comment made me realise that I wear a tessellated nose pin that I should have added to this post. Oh well.
No, I haven't heard of @steembasicincome. Thank you so much for sending in my name with steem!! :D I'm touched. I'll look into it.
He had entered an art contest (https://steemit.com/art/@soulturtle/art-explosion-or-city) and his piece looked very Escher-ish.
So steembasicincome will send you an upvote from now on on every post you post. Obviously the more shares you have the more the upvote is. For sure look into it... in a few days you should start seeing an upvote from @SBi (with a number) or something like that! Enjoy
Ah yes! I remember that one.
THANK YOU!
You're welcome