The Barbarian Group (Boston, MA)
Biomimetic Butterflies: Sets, 2007
Limited edition print on paper, Edition of 10 (per family)
7”h x 13”w

This limited edition print features the best two butterflies from each family.

Biomimetic Butterflies were a result of a cross country collaboration between Barbarian Group members located in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles.

To make the butterflies, the Barbarians started tossing about different ideas for generative wing design. First up was Voronoi. The Voronoi was decided upon because the vein structure of butterflies resembles Voronoi cells. This algorithm was stretched into two solutions, Angular Voronoi and B-spline Voronoi. The angular version had thin straight Voronoi boundaries and the B-spline version had curves fitted to the negative spaces created from the angular version.

Angular Voronoi

B-spline Voronoi

Next up was flow lines. It is essentially a fluid simulation that shows the direction of the fluid movement not as a grid of vectors but as a solid curved line. This algorithm was also stretched into two versions. The second version mapped circles along the curved lines.

Flowlines

Circle Flowlines

Intersecting lines was probably the easiest to work out. Several lines are thrown into the butterfly wing outline and several can share the same intersection point. These points are augmented with a larger circular shape. The end result was surprising and extremely delicate.

Intersecting Lines

Cracking! The general rule for this piece was to take the wing shape and find its centroid. From here, several line segments would be drawn. The resulting shapes were also analyzed to find their centroids. This was repeated for several iterations and the retrofitted with B-spline curves.

Cracking

And finally, Circle Packing. Randomly sized created circles are randomly placed into the butterfly wing shape. If there is any overlap, that circle is tossed.

Circle Packing

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