In August of 2015 mathematicians Casey Mann, Jennifer McLoud, and David Von Derau discovered a 15th monohedral tiling convex pentagon using a computer algorithm. The last such pentagon was discovered by Rolf Stein in 1985. When I learned of their discovery I immediately thought it’d be fun to see if I could port the geometry over to c++ and include it in an app I had been working on that maps a live video feed onto an oscillating mesh.

I think the pattern is quite beautiful and has an organic quality about it that reminds me of autumn leaves.

This project started back in 2013 when I was experimenting with ways to integrate a Leap Motion controller into a project. The original idea was to allow the user to pull and push a mesh of triangles in three dimensions which you can kind of see working in the first video however I have since shifted focus towards integrating more geometric patterns into the app.

Once I have all 15 tiling pentagon patterns added to the app I intend on offering this project to a public exhibition and/or will be releasing it on the App Store. As of November of 2015 I am about halfway there.

I think this project is a fun way to celebrate the incredible accomplishment of the mathematicians who have discovered these patterns and I hope it helps fuel an interest in Mathematics and programmatically generated art amongst those who play with it.