 I
Discover Escher
My life took some odd twists and turns, and by the
late 1970's I found myself a manager at the University of Delaware's
Computing Center. It was my job to make sure that students and
professors got the help they needed in using the university's computers.
I had many friends among the students who worked part time at the
Computer Center. One of them taught me as much as I ever taught him. His
name was Robert Dute.
Robert Dute looked at life differently. He rented an apartment in a
building filled with normal everyday run-of-the-mill students. Robert
was not a run-of-the-mill student. He never had the electricity turned
on and never furnished the place at all. He put a mattress in one corner
of the living room for sleeping, and conducted his investigations
sitting crosslegged on the floor by the light of a kerosene lamp. Robert
was a true student who learned things because he wanted to, not just
because this was required of him. Once when we were talking about dome
housing, I drew him a picture of what such a house looked like. He
looked at the drawing for a while and then said that he wanted to learn
how to draw and would see me later. It was four weeks later that I next
saw him. He walked into my office and showed me a thick stack of
drawings. In a month of concentrated artistic effort, he had gone from
being pretty bad to being a pretty good. Robert was like that. An idea
would possess him and become an all consuming passion until he was
satisfied. He believed that he could do absolutely anything; all that
was required was a daily commitment to trying. There is truth in this
idea. Using Robert's philosophy, I have, over the years, taught myself
to juggle, do sleight of hand magic tricks and memorize nearly anything.
Most Fridays at quitting time, Robert would show up at my office with a
chess board under his arm and fire in his eyes. He was bound and
determined to beat me at chess, though usually I was able to stave off
his attacks and win. As we played, we talked about the week gone by. On
one fateful Friday, I showed him a copy of Scientific American that had
a beautiful tiling pattern on the cover. He was a little interested, so
I dug out some older articles by Martin Gardner about the mathematics of
such patterns. When Robert saw the equations, he asked me to explain and
I did my best. He was fascinated by the fusion of trigonometry with art
involved in the paintings of M.C. Escher, and went away with his chess
set and my magazines muttering about learning more about trigonometry
and graphics programming. Over the next two months he developed a
program called ESCHER that allowed a person at a graphics computer
terminal to create Escher-like drawings quickly and easily. I was his
main tester and critic and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Ultimately, he
developed a program which would generate beautiful black and white
results, and I used many of Robert's symmetric drawings on the covers of
Computer Center publications. One day he was done with the ESCHER
program and ready for another challenge. When last I saw Robert, he was
writing an operating system for Prime microcomputers and the folks from
Prime were offering him big bucks to come work for them.
Robert's ESCHER program was really great, but I wanted to write my own.
ESCHER required a $3 million dollar Burroughs B6700 computer and an
esoteric graphics terminal to run. Also, it only worked in black and
white and printed its results on special, nasty smelling, purplish
paper. What I wanted was to create color drawings on an inexpensive
popular computer and to get sweet smelling results. Microcomputers for
home use were just appearing. I decided I would wait a while before
writing my version of ESCHER and then do it on a color-capable
microcomputer. I waited and waited and waited.
|
 
 |
|
Books:
Handbook of Regular Patterns: An Introduction to Symmetry in Two
Dimensions
Peter S. Stevens, Cambridge: MIT Press,
1980
M. C. Escher: Visions in Symmetry, Doris Schattschneider,
New York
W. H. Freeman and Co., 1990.
Many good books about Escher are available. This one
has the most to say about the
symmetrical aspects of his work.
|
