Moiré patterns as art: an unexpected discovery

Way back in 2001 I was playing around in Photoshop on the family mac desktop at the time, and found a way of creating flowing shapes that I still use to this day, and which I have not seen anyone else do in quite the same way. This was the technique: paint interesting shapes > gaussian blur very wide > new layer > paint bucket with “aware of all layers” > creates moiré interference patterns of the blur contours. Changing the tolerance and contiguous on/off settings affects how far the fill reaches. The following was one of the first pieces of digital art I ever made, and it’s quite nostalgic for me.

“Rebirth” (2001)

It looks like a computer, textile, and destroyed digital photograph at the same time. Maybe broken tech. Maybe it’s a sunrise or sunset, and those are crepuscular rays coming through the clouds. Sadly I no longer have the original .psd file with the layers and blending options. But I know I used Overlay a lot. And this image was full screen sized with the resolutions at the time.

Here are some later examples of moiré art I’ve made over the years.

This one above is called Annapurna Circuit, I think my most successful use of the technique so far. And here is the underpainting for it:

You can see I made several layers with different gaussian blur moirés with blends interacting across each other.

This one was more experimental and not finished, probably trying to do too many textures at once. And I notice that, although I like green, most people do not like green!

I think this one was a detail of a larger piece. I like to combine the interference patterns with actual sized-up screenshots/images of the screen itself from a camera to highlight the pixel tapestry. There is an interesting contrast of crunchy pixels, then less orderly and eroded rocky terrain, next to smooth swirls that are perhaps like a pool of water.

I’ve even tried to recreate it on pen and paper…