Fields · Study 003
Truchet Weather
A wall of Truchet tiles, each printed with two quarter circles, rotating at random to redraw an endless tangle of pipes. Sweep to flip them.
What you're looking at
Every square tile carries the same design: two arcs joining the midpoints of adjacent sides. A tile has only two distinct orientations. Because the arcs always meet their neighbours at the edge midpoints, any random arrangement produces continuous loops and wandering paths.
The idea behind it
The idea goes back to Sébastien Truchet, who catalogued patterns from diagonally split tiles in 1704. The curved variant shown here was popularised much later by Cyril Stanley Smith. It is one of the cheapest ways to get global structure from purely local, random choices.
Try this
Sweep the pointer across the wall to flip tiles as you pass. They also flip on their own.
