Aperiodic Amphibia I Limited Edition of 8
The Ammann A3 set uses three tile shapes, which combine in various ways to make each other’s substitution set. Stepping back from the print, you get a lovely sense of the complex order within it, neither disordered nor random, it is also not rigid or easy to sort out in our heads. The colour distribution reminds of the sort of mix you get in autumn leaves or in the crystals in granite. In this tessellation, two kinds of mutant Amphibia roam the page, there are actually 3 tiles, with the third tile a combination of the first two, modified to fit the tile profile.
Escher has a series of bug-eyed creatures in his symmetry drawings, particularly no.60 (Baarn XII-42) - obviously a related species. , When working out the tessellations, sometimes there is just a lot of “real estate” that has to be dealt with in the head region. But it does give an endearing quality – large eyes are something we respond to, and they give an impression of intense interest and intelligence – oversized devices for taking in information about the world around us.
Interestingly, doing the tessellation led me to discover that the traditional substitution did not work with edge profiles, there was an occasional anomaly where the third tile would be the cause of errors and overlaps after a few substitutions. I discovered that the third tile needed to be combined with the first tile, and to mutate the first two creatures, thus this tessellation is actually on a modified 3rd tile version of the Amman A3 set to allow perfect substitution with profiled tiles. Note the escaping mutant to the right of the middle of the base
- Archival Pigment print on Bamboo Awagami Washi paper
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118 x 84 cm
(46.46 x 33.07 in)