Metallic Wave
This is one of a sequence of fourteen images that appeared as chapter
headings and as the cover image for the textbook Statistics, the
conceptual approach, by G. R. Iverson and M.
Gergen (Springer-Verlag, 1997). Each chapter heading was a picture
of this object from a different viewpoint.
The surface is one of a family of related parametric surfaces
initially described by David Mond and Washington Marar; this one is
interesting in that it is a ruled surface with a triple point,
although the triple intersection is not visible in this view.
The publishers requested this sequence from Tom Banchoff and me after
seeing the image
"Triple-Point Twist"
that is part of our virtual
art gallery ``Surfaces Beyond the Third Dimension''
,
which features this surface. One of the animations at that site
shows a series of views of this object rotating in space, and the
publishers picked the fourteen views they most preferred from that
collection.
I produced the requested images (in black-and-white) from the data
originally created for "Triple-Point Twist". My role in developing
that piece was to go from Tom's original request ("Find an
interesting one of the Mond and Marar surfaces") to the final
product. This involved looking through the dozens of families of
parametric surfaces they described to find an esthetically pleasing
one, and then determining the material characteristics, lighting and
viewpoint that would be used in the finished image.
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