
The geometry of Islamic art becomes a game - sohkamyung
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/engare-review-spirographs-math-and-islamic-art-blend-for-quite-the-game/
======
kweks
For anyone interested, Iran has some amazing examples of mind bending mosque
decoration. If you're a fan of maths, tesselation, art or architecture, it's
all there.

They have a style that I can only describe as 3D honeycomb stalactites.. they
when viewed from a specific angle all align perfectly to make repeating
patterns.

Ie:
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/3b/5a/eb3b5a6ad5751fa0276a...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/3b/5a/eb3b5a6ad5751fa0276a10633b82541a.jpg)

Truly staggering works.

~~~
vikascoder
Too bad they are all bad people and need to be banned from entering the USA...
jk! jk! When I hear something positive around Islam in the US, it makes my
mind spin and I have to check if I have been suddenly teleported to an
alternate reality where people have an actual interest in appreciating the
rich cultures and their nuances and history.

~~~
spiralganglion
In case it's unclear, I believe people are down-voting you because you speak
as though everyone in the US is anti-Islam. The Trump government and their
supporters may well be, but more broadly the anti-Islam sentiment is a
fiction, especially among the intellectually curious and doing-our-best-to-be-
welcoming HN audience. I know you probably meant well with your comment, it
just feels bad because this is such a sore spot.

~~~
puranjay
I've never understood the Iran hate. Iranian culture is very distinct from
Arab culture. It is truly one of the oldest and greatest human cultures, and
it's a shame that more people don't get to experience it because of this
irrational hatred and suspicion

~~~
fooker
>It is truly one of the oldest and greatest human cultures.

Very little of that Iranian culture has survived the Islamic 'revolution'.

~~~
srean
There is some of it India.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#History)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irani_(India)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irani_\(India\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#Prominent_Parsis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi#Prominent_Parsis)

------
Zaheer
I've always been fascinated by Islamic Art and curious how such complex shapes
could be drawn from simple tools. The video looks really cool.

edit: Link to the actual game site, hard to find on the article page -
[http://www.engare.design/](http://www.engare.design/) Sound composer for
trailer:
[https://soundcloud.com/mimrasouli](https://soundcloud.com/mimrasouli)

~~~
Carioca
It appears Mahdi hasn't updated the site with it, so here's the link to the
game on steam:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/415170/Engare/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/415170/Engare/)

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stared
Totally adding it to [https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-
list](https://github.com/stared/science-based-games-list), in mathematics /
geometry.

------
jarmitage
Everyone should check out Tandis by the same game designer - "A game where
mathematical functions are used as modelling tool"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxTOY1-jYro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxTOY1-jYro)

------
amai
But can it also do quasi-periodic patterns?
[http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/jan/31/ancient...](http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/jan/31/ancient-
islamic-architects-created-perfect-quasicrystals)

------
sohkamyung
Here's an interesting 2014 article on the game's creator, Mahdi Bahrami [1]

[1] [https://iq.intel.com/irans-gaming-pioneer-brings-the-east-
to...](https://iq.intel.com/irans-gaming-pioneer-brings-the-east-to-west/)

------
silveira
Steam link:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/415170/Engare/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/415170/Engare/)
Save 15% right now.

------
mcguire
For some reason, Raymond Lully
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Llull))
comes to mind.

~~~
kurosawa
his mnemotechnic devices and 'art of memory' (later to influence modern
computation) derive from devices from the preceding islamic tradition in
andalusia (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zairja](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zairja))

There are deep connections between the _functions_ of geometry and geometry
influenced aesthetics, the zairja tradition, and several other things.

------
mikhailfranco
If you are interested in a more mathematical method of generating Islamic
patterns based on tilings, be sure to look at the work of Craig Kaplan,
especially his Ph.D. thesis and related software tools, but perhaps start
here:

[http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2000/bridges2000-105.pdf](http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2000/bridges2000-105.pdf)

------
BobMackay
Just as a heads up, if you try to run this program with your monitor in
portrait mode, the program defaults to full screen mode, but assumes a
landscape monitor. The parts that are cut off are critical to getting the
program to do anything at all, since you have to start by clicking on a green
window that is off the side of the screen. Nice music though...

------
chillingeffect
I'm delighted to see some of the algs behind making these are strikingly
accessible!

Dumb question though: Even though many of the operations appear to be composed
of 2-3 superimposed harmonically-related sinusoidal functions, how come they
don't appear to resemble the set of figures in spirographs? Is it due to
specific sets of constants? The shading?

------
satya71
I had my nephew play it yesterday and he loved it.

~~~
sytelus
how old?

~~~
satya71
7

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WaxProlix
Spirograph Simulator?

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pavel_lishin
Looks great; just bought it for the hope that I can pull the soundtrack into
my phone.

------
partycoder
Knowledge is carried through generations and by interrupting that, you cause
irreversible harm. That's effectively what the mongols did to the Islamic
empire.

The mongol invasion of the Islamic empire had as an objective made an example
out of any nation that did not agree to pay tribute to the mongols. They did
this by razing the cities to the ground.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)#Destru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_\(1258\)#Destruction)

The Siege of Baghdad resulted in the death of many scholars, the destruction
of the Great Library of Baghdad, etc.

Curiously enough, their most important cultural achievements have survived in
our own culture, after the Spanish reconquista and the Latin translations of
the 12th century in Toledo.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th_century)

The European Reinassance was essentially the assimilation of the cultural
wealth amassed by the Islamic empire. Once the Roman Catholic church was
influenced by philosophy (e.g: Saint Thomas Aquinas, who studied from
translated material), they stopped prosecuting science so severely.

~~~
mutatio
> The European Reinassance was essentially the assimilation of the
> achievements of the Islamic empire.

Not really true. The Greek were much more influential - which the Arabs helped
spread from their military conquests.

~~~
jacobolus
The “Greeks” (Hellenistic scholars) were actually from Egypt, Asia Minor,
Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Italy, Macedonia, etc. in addition to
Greece.

There was a 1000 year period where Greek was the lingua franca of
math/astronomy/engineering in the Mediterranean, from about 500 BCE to 500 CE.
There was a lot of contemporaneous science done in Persia, with knowledge
shared back and forth. But calling these “Greeks” is sort of like calling
anyone publishing science in English in 1990 (including Chinese, Russians,
Brazilians, ...) “Americans”.

Many of those “Greek” ideas were originally developed during the 3000 years
prior, when the centers of mathematics and technical culture were Egypt and
Mesopotamia, written in Egyptian, Sumerian, or Akkadian.

Then from about 500 CE to 1500 CE, the centers of scholarship were in India
and throughout the Islamic World (Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, North
Africa, Spain, ...). The first couple hundred years of Western European
mathematics is basically republication of stuff that had been developed by the
Arabs hundreds of years earlier.

At some point about 500 years ago Christian Western Europeans (Germans,
French, English, Dutch, Italians, ..) got their mathematical shit together,
and dominated science for about 400 years. More recently, science and
technology happen around the world.

~~~
yumraj
Minor correction: a lot, if not most, of Arab innovations in science and
mathematics were republications of ideas developed in India.

~~~
baxtr
You mean India _and_ Persia I suppose :-)

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stefanwlb
Islamic art? Surely you mean the Christian art that was appropriated by the
Ottoman Empire...

~~~
dang
Religious flamewar is not allowed on HN. We ban accounts that do this, so
please don't do this.

