Fields · Study 006
Moiré Drift
Two sets of concentric rings slide over each other and phantom hyperbolas appear. An interactive moiré pattern you can drag around.
What you're looking at
There are only two things on the canvas: a black set of evenly spaced rings and a red one. Where the gratings fall in step you see through them, where they fall out of step they block each other, and the slow beat between the two reads as bold curved bands that belong to neither set.
The idea behind it
Moiré fringes are spatial beats, the visual cousin of two slightly detuned notes. Engineers use them to measure tiny strains and misalignments, because a shift far too small to see directly moves the fringes by a large, obvious amount.
Try this
Move the pointer to drag the red grating. Small movements near the centre cause the biggest changes.
