From Wikipedia: “In physics, mathematics, and art, a moiré pattern is a secondary and visually evident superimposed pattern created, for example, when two identical (usually transparent) patterns on a flat or curved surface (such as closely spaced straight lines drawn radiating from a point or taking the form of a grid) are overlaid while displaced or rotated a small amount from one another”.
You probably see moiré patterns every day! We are surrounded by grids and lines that can overlap to form these patterns. Maybe you’ve seen a television show that had a character wearing a striped shirt that looked a little bit like this. Or maybe you’ve seen overlapping mesh. Mesh can form very visible moiré patterns. I created a gif from Paul Nylander’s video of an IKEA waste basket displaying very obvious moiré patterns:
Moire patterns can be used to create art. Above are GIFs of a book called Poemotion created by a Japanese designer named Takahiro Kurashima. It’s pages are filled with an assortment of patterns. From Poemotion’s publisher, ”Poemotion is an interactive book-object. The abstract graphical patterns in this small volume are set in motion as soon as you move the attached special foil across them. Moiré effects allow complex forms to develop, set circles in motion and make graphical patterns vibrate.” Click here to watch a very cool Vimeo about Poemotion.
