Moiré Index creates what is perhaps the first visual lexicon of moire patterns.
Carsten Nicolai is a visual and sound artist who’s new book Moiré Index from Die Gestalten creates what is perhaps the first visual lexicon of moire patterns.
A moiré pattern is an interference pattern created when two grids are overlaid at slightly different angles or when they have slightly different mesh sizes. Moiré patterns are often an undesired artifact of images produced by various digital imaging and computer graphics techniques, for example when scanning a halftone picture or ray tracing a checkered plane.
In graphic arts and prepress, the usual technology for printing full-color images involves the superimposition of halftone screens. These are regular rectangular dot patterns—often four of them, printed in cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. Some kind of moiré pattern is inevitable, but in favorable circumstances the pattern is “tight;” that is, the spatial frequency of the moiré is so high that it is not noticeable. In the graphic arts, the term moiré means an excessively visible moiré pattern. Part of the prepress art consists of selecting screen angles and halftone frequencies which minimize moiré. The visibility of moiré is not entirely predictable. The same set of screens may produce good results with some images, but visible moiré with others.
Nicolai’s body of music engages the blips, bleeps, and static of data being visualized, sometimes through automation. He carried this interest into a series of published work categorizing the artifacts of visual data representation. Moiré Index methodically —and obsessively— sorts through the variety of moires patterns to deliver a comprehensive reference point for the patterns.
