Des fleurs du mal

Generative artwork made with code in p5js, using Turing Patterns and Perlin noise. Inspired by Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) the volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire - focusing on suffering, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world. The Turing pattern is a concept introduced by mathematician Alan Turing in a 1952 paper titled "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" which describes how patterns in nature, such as stripes and spots, can arise naturally and autonomously from a homogeneous, uniform state. The pattern arises due to Turing instability which in turn arises due to the interplay between diffusion (i.e., different values of diffusion coefficients) of chemical species and chemical reaction. Turing hypothesized that the resulting wavelike patterns are the chemical basis of morphogenesis. Turing patterning is often found in combination with other patterns: vertebrate limb development is one of the many phenotypes exhibiting Turing patterning overlapped with a complementary pattern. "Des fleurs du mal" is using a Turing pattern with parameters adjusted in real time via a DIY Arduino controller.