# Re-creating Julio Le Parc's scultpures

---

Julio parc is an Argentinian artist whose light-reflecting sculptures captured my attention years ago. I first interacted with his big rouge spheres, and found his use of geometry to be effortlessly pleasing to look at. Julio Le Parc © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP Paris Photo: André Morin

When I first started watching Processing tutorials, Le Parc's sculptures were one of the first things I thought of. The code below documents a 2-dimensional version of how to animate his glass squares that spin around their central axis. The essence of the code is in setting a time axis with periodic sine functions that stretch and shrink different sides of the quadrilaterals, giving the illusion of their rotation. The RGB color values are chosen at random independently; though the random ranges of the "R" value factors in how much the square is stretched, while the "G" and "B" values are consistently chosen from the same range. A simple shadow shape is added for effect. In Processing-like fashion, the `setup()` function sets the canvas size. Global variables are then created.

 
        def setup():
            size(900, 900)
            frameRate(10)

        rows, cols = 15, 15
        num_squares = int(rows*cols)

        t = [random(10) for i in range(num_squares)]
        stretch = [random(-1,1) for i in range(num_squares)]
    

The `draw()` function then performs some simple calculations.

 
        def draw():
            global rows, cols, stretch, t, num_squares         # setting global variables  
            background(color(204, 196, 181))                   # paper color

            noStroke()                                          # no outline for boxes
            stretch = [stretch[i] - random(-1*abs(-2+t[i]/50), abs(1.8-t[i]/50)) * sin(10*t[i])
                        for i in range(num_squares)]            # width of boxes
            t = [t[i] + 2*PI/10 for i in range(num_squares)]    # advance in real time 

            for i in range(rows):
                for j in range(cols):
                    index = j+i*cols
                    centerx = i/1.5*width/cols + width/10 + 75
                    centery = j/1.5*height/rows + height/10 + 75
                    x1, y1 = centerx-stretch[index], centery-8+int(random(4))
                    x2, y2 = centerx-stretch[index], centery+8+int(random(4))
                    x3, y3 = centerx+stretch[index], centery+8+int(random(4))
                    x4, y4 = centerx+stretch[index], centery-8+int(random(4))

                    fill(190, 133, 118)                         # shadow color
                    quad(x1+5, y1+5, x2+5, y2+5, x3+5, y3+5, x4+5, y4+5) 

                    fill(int(random(110+stretch[index], 140)),
                        int(random(20, 40)), int(random(20, 40)))

                    quad(x1, y1, x2, y2, x3, y3, x4, y4)
    

That's the final result!