9 ms·
A few years ago I made a "string art" portrait for my girlfriend at the time. It's made from a continuous† 2 km long black thread, woven around a loom made from
by kmm 3y ago
A few years ago I made a "string art" portrait for my girlfriend at the time. It's made from a continuous† 2 km long black thread, woven around a loom made from a bicycle wheel rim. I'm still very proud of how it turned out.
†OK fine, it broke at a few points and I had to knot the ends together, but it's the principle that counts.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ljoJeal https://imgur.com/gallery/ljoJeal
I really wanted to make something creative for her, but I'm pretty terrible as an artist, so I instead applied a talent I do have: making 200 line Python scripts. Apparently the first to do this was an artist named Petros Vrellis, though I did come up with it independently.
Sadly, we've broken up since then, and we didn't remain friends. I do wonder what happened to it, I can't imagine she'd've thrown it out, but on the other hand it would be odd to have a physically quite large memento to a previous relationship hanging from your wall.
- jameswatling 3y agoThis is awesome, and am so tempted to try.... one question, how long did it take to physically complete this! Also I know you had to "repair" the string a few times, but is this a 2mi single thread?
- kmm 3y agoI don't remember exactly, it's been 5 years, but I remember there were almost 4000 loops. The loom is a little less than a meter across, but most loop don't span the entire width of the loom, so half a meter per loop is a good estimate, which would yield 2 kilometers. I think that's only 20 euros worth of thread. Similarly, assuming the average loop took me 10 seconds to do, that amounts to about 10 hours, and I do remember that the final step only took a day or 4, with a few hours of work every evening.
- mips_avatar 3y agoThis is so beautiful, thank you for sharing. My favorite HN comment of the year
- netsharc 3y agoIf I could guess, the gift is in a box somewhere in her garage/attic/etc, too nice to throw away but too awkward to display.
- _zoltan_ 3y agowould you consider sharing the python code?
- kmm 3y agoHere you go https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab722ae387b4 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7... https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200a0f42f501 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200... Haven't looked at it in five years, but it should probably still work if you update the variables at the top.
- _zoltan_ 3y agothank you
- mutatio 3y agoWonderful expression of art and life, bravo.
- jacquesm 3y agoThat's very nicely done, impressed!
- chankstein38 3y agoThis is SO cool! I love the python script too!
- mdip 3y agoGotta say -- that looks ... kinda awesome. I'm sorry the relationship didn't work out. I can completely relate, though. I think just about every "coolest physical thing" I've made ended up going to an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend. I guess I'm just not motivated to make cool physical things for myself.
- chews 3y agoThat is truly remarkable… nicely done. Also, love is an intense thing and it doesn’t always work out… just don’t lose that love of love
- pimlottc 3y agoThat’s really cool! Did you publish your code anywhere?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jukkakoskinen 3y agoI found this in the Imgur comments: https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab722ae387b4 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7...
- sulZ 3y agoDo you have the source code for the scripts you wrote to help? I'd be interested in seeing them
- kmm 3y agoThey're in two gists here: https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab722ae387b4 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7... https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200a0f42f501 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200... I just hacked it together, but I do think it's not unreadable code
- nojs 3y agoThat is insanely cool, I would love to see the script to convert png to string placement.
- kmm 3y agoEnjoy https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab722ae387b4 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/781f0137b361b51224dcab7... https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200a0f42f501 https://gist.github.com/kaspermeerts/b6f158b1278de307e48a200... I hope it's readable
- JackFr 3y agoBest no-word, visual, intuitive explanation of how CAT scans work ever!
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI'm not sure I'd be able to figure it out easily if I didn't already know how a CAT scan works, but I agree it's a excellent demonstration of the principle
- liamwire 3y agoNot knowing how a CAT scan works, beyond a vague intuition from already knowing what the acronym stands for, and not wanting to look it up before making a guess: can I assume it’s akin to this, in that radiation is shot from an emission source, through the target, to a detector on the other side, with the density of the material attenuating the signal in predictable ways, from which we can apply a transformation to some large number of such measurements to achieve a computed 3D result?
- s1artibartfast 3y agoindeed. In a closer analogy to a CAT scan, each nail would have a string connecting it to a ~10 degree spread of nails on the opposite side, and each string would be grayscale. The real physics is quite tricky, because you actually emit a variety of x-ray energies at once, each with different penetrating power, and xray flux varies spatially as well. this means each of your angular strings has its own grayscale response curve. heres a simple rundown: https://radiologykey.com/computed-tomography-16/ https://radiologykey.com/computed-tomography-16/
- pengaru 3y agoImpressive creation, creepy gift.
- jacquesm 3y agoCreepy comment.
- hattmall 3y agoExtremely unnerving.
- slow_typist 3y agoNothing creepy here.
- Simon_O_Rourke 3y agoBeautiful piece of art, sorry the whole relationship side of it didn't work out... Onward and upward!
- networkchad 3y agoSorry about the relationship not working out. That art is a beautiful piece of work.