Doyle Spiral Studio

Overview

This project started when I stumbled upon a video by Arram Sabeti on Twitter showing mesmerizing animated Doyle spirals etched into metal. I was so captivated by the effect that I had to rebuild it myself.

Doyle Studio is a generative art tool I created to compute Doyle spirals and more patterns that can be exported as SVGs for fabrication with a fiber laser. The software can be used to animate geometric textures on a rotating disk, then translate the animations into physical pieces through engraving angled line patterns with a fibo laser. The current pipeline renders animated patterns and generates high-resolution SVGs for laser engraving. The surfaces reflection sequences can be changed based on the angle of the engrave line pattern similar to a zoetrope.

GitHub Repository

Experiments

• Tested both steel etching and wood lasering; both work, but steel is more promising for crisp contrast and durability.
• Ongoing tuning of fabrication settings to make the animated motion very clearly visible in the etched results.
• Planned animation UI driven by cellular automata rules to vary the Doyle spiral parameters over time.
• Future experiments with pixel-grid renderings to compare against the smooth circle packings for alternative animation aesthetics.

Gallery

Videos

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Arram Sabeti for the original concept. His Twitter video was so mesmerizing that I couldn't stop thinking about it until I built my own version.