Diana Connolly – Looking Outwards 7

Flow Of Life Flow Of Pi, by Cristian Ilies Vasile

Flow Of Life Flow Of Pi is a digital artwork piece by artist Cristian Ilies Vasile. Vasile created this piece using the software called Circos, a circular visualization software. The piece visualizes a dataset by using an information graphic to represent the first 10,000 digits of pi. Each digit of pi is connected by a string to the following digit of pi. The numbers 0-9 represent all possible numbers that could occur within each digit, and thus are represented around the circumference of the circle and are given their own color in the infographic. When a line goes from one number to another, the fill color of the line goes from from the first number’s assigned color to the second number’s assigned color. I admire this piece because I think it is a beautiful way to visualize the complexity of pi. I am an illustrator myself and often think about ways to best represent an object or idea, and I appreciate the simplicity of the final image and how it represents such a vast number of digits all at once. The algorithm used to generate the work involved the Circos software which took in all of the 10,000 digits of pi and connected the digits with lines. The creator’s artistic sensibilities are manifested in the final form because the artist wanted to represent the vast number of pi’s digits in a simple yet beautiful way. I think that he succeeded in doing that, as the viewer is able to see the visualization of the patterns in pi’s digits as the individual lines between digits constructs its own web of connections.

Below is a link to an article written about this piece, as well as a few others of Vasile’s works:
https://www.visualnews.com/2013/07/09/the-art-of-pi-a-colorful-data-visualization/