Spiral Staircase

This image of recursion is not done in software – it’s an amazing achievement in bricks and mortar (and a beautiful photograph):

Thanks to quapan. It’s presumably his or her foot that can be seen at the bottom of the photo. Nice to see the maker’s mark in the artefact itself.

Moebius Comic Strip

Have a look at this great Moebius comic strip made by cartoonist and graphic artist Jim Woodring

Below is an animated version of the strip so you can follow the story:

And here‘s a video of the comic strip being handled and displayed

T-shirt

If TLA is a recursive acronym, it must also be allowed that T-shirt is a self-describing word. And just look at this T-shirt:

photo credit: paulandstorm

An image of recursion: first approximations

Inspired by recursion hell, I thought I should have a go at contriving some recursive images of my own. My plan was simple. Surely all I had to do was hook up an external monitor, open the Mac Photo Booth application and place the monitor facing the screen of the laptop. In this way I thought I should able to create an instant Droste effect. But when when I pressed the ‘take photo’ button, all I got was a white screen as if I’d overloaded the system.

In the end I had to resort to the unsatisfactory solution of using a third device, viz my camera. It was difficult to get the two screens parallel while at the same time keeping the camera out of the picture:

This next one was a bit better in terms of the angle but didn’t show the recurring image as well.

At the end of the day, I wonder if I could achieve better results more simply just by using the screen-grab feature.

…I could end up being here all night at this rate.