Labyrinths and Mazes

We shall not cease from exploring,
and the end of all our exploring,
will be to arrive where we started,
and know the place for the first time.
-T.S.Eliot.

Labyrinths and mazes cradle millennia of legend and lore in their twisted articulations and are often considered mankind's first creation borne purely of human imagination.

Tantric symbol from 18th century manuscript.
Copyright © 2002 Hermann Kern,

Semantically, a labyrinth is a meandering path that simply winds its way from start to finish like the grooves on vinyl. Mazes have forks, dead-ends and cycles but are conceptually the dual or the space between the grooves, where the complexity lies.

Artistically, these structures are immortalized in the work of Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher, Keith Haring and recently Mo Morales. The organic labyrinths you see below are created with curves evolving under the forces of nature, guided by an artistic hand. One could hypothesize that earliest known labyrinths were inspired by such physical forms.

Our labyrinths capture visuals viewable at sizes ranging from microscopic to planetary, while the path itself encodes a chronology, be it a story, lyric or melodic progression in time. Coupled with interactive technology our labyrinths are a fertile visual playing field to explore multimedia.

The music browsing interface below maps 4 tracks from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to 4 labyrinthine images of the members of the band. The soundscape is explored by clicking and dragging the needle along the grooves or flicking it to play faster or slower in either direction. Track volume is mapped to needle size to illustrate how everything from a sound wave to lyrics or other information can be interactively displayed.

The executable above is self-contained. If it does not run, install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 after which it should work on all platforms. Collaborative work with the fantastically talented Pierre Dragicevic.

	...a musical gallery

...jimi etched on wood	...jimi on vinyl	...jim

		...ian	...jethro rings

	...miles	...more miles	...kind of blue

is there anybody out there?


...pink floyd prism	...any colour you like
Copyright © 2006 Karan Singh, Hans Pedersen, Mo Morales, All Rights Reserved

Add lyrics and words become an artistic tool ...the phrasing guiding the shape and length of the resulting labyrinth.

Jabberwocky along the perimeter enclosing To a Mouse by Robbie Burns a lament to rats in a maze, or if you look closer...

To a Mouse with a different tail by Karan Singh.

			...nature's labyrinths




order in chaos or chaos in order... what do you see?



...the chakra-vyuha, past and present.

....a long and winding road

Self-referential photoframe hoarding

Labyrinths that crawl about on a plane could just as well grow on 3D geometry.

These meandering structures have a wide range of applications from security and watermarking to developable surface construction to hybrid perceptual imagery. ...simply varying the background from black to white on a static labyrinth in this video yields and interesting motion illusion.

...technical details: Organic Labyrinths & Mazes [Paper][Color Plate] [Video][Amazing!][Image Gallery] NPAR 2006.