K-D Tree Mango 45

Each work in this series starts as ten thousand points scattered at random across a square. You never see the points, only where they were cut.

The image is built by a k-d tree, an algorithm computer scientists use to search space quickly. It splits the field at its median point, first vertically and then horizontally, and keeps dividing each half until the space breaks into thousands of rectangles. Every cut leaves the same number of points on each side, so the grid is an exact map of a hidden density. Where the scatter was thin, the cells are large and open. Where points crowded together, the grid tightens.

Each cell is printed as a solid block of colour, set slightly in from its neighbours so that thin channels of bare paper run between them. Most cells take a pale wash of the palette, and a scattered few take full colour from a narrow ramp of related hues.

Nothing is placed by hand. A single random seed decides every point, cut and colour, and the same seed always makes the same image, so the print is exactly the composition the artist chose.

Open-edition print with a white paper margin carrying the title and work number. Made in Processing.