Giraffes have a look: brown puzzle blocks edged with white. Zebras are even more iconic, with those bold contrasty stripes. I don’t know how much good it does them on the Serengeti, but the branding is magnificent.
The interesting question is: how do you paint a zebra? How does a zebra come by its look? By going to the animal print store and searching the Zs? Visiting their favorite stripe salon for a new do? No, they get those stripes at the same store that sold you your fingerprints. The mom store. It’s in the genes. But saying it’s in the genes doesn’t really tell us much. How does it work?
Suppose you want your dining room done up in realistic zebra stripes. Your mom being human, you can’t do the zebra trick. So you go shopping for a quality zebra wallpaper print. That’s a challenge, but let’s assume you find it. Then there are other problems. First, it’s hard to get the paper to line up perfectly so the seams all fit. Next, you’ll notice repeating patterns in your wallpaper, because that’s how wallpaper works. Once you notice it, it will drive you crazy. But real zebras never have this problem. Their patterning is unique, and it shifts perfectly to suit the contours of their body. How?
The answer is that it’s a procedural pattern. There’s a program that paints zebra-ness in just the right way onto the canvas that is Mr. Zebra. And now, through the magic of neural networks, we can do it too. Check out this paper on self-organizing textures from some folks at Google.
Check it out! It’s mesmerizing, and there are dozens of patterns to play with, including, naturally, the iconic zebra. And since it’s algorithmic, we can give it different conditions. This, for example, is what zebra stripes look like at the south pole.
In the future, everything will be procedural. Architecture, silverware, clothing. If you want zebra stripes in your dining room, all you’ll need to do is specify exactly the area that you want to cover. Then you can just drop a zebra pattern seed in the lower left corner and wait. But we can do the zebra one better. If, next week, you decide it should be a giraffe-themed dining experience, just drop in a giraffe seed.
We’re starting to get a better idea how life cooks up, as Darwin says, “endless forms most beautiful.” I’ll leave you with a link to work by Sage Jenson, who might be one of the first biological artists. These simulations, originally inspired by slime mold self-organization, are essentially living canvases.
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 