Diploma part2: ornaments

After my first attempt to create a visual interpretation for the subject of my diploma (see Diploma Takeoff) I tried to find a more systematic approach. I remembered one of Borges´ most important stylistic devices that he used in many of his short stories: pars pro toto - it means that one part of an object represents the entire object (e.g. a book that represents all books in "The Library of Babel").

A visual equivalent for the pars pro toto concept would be the Ornament.

Ornaments are used as a decorative element in Architecture, in Textiles or on Wallpapers (see img1). One Ornament represents the whole image. It´s repeated to a pattern and could be build up to infinity (in theory...)

I started to experiment with my own ornamental system (see img2 and img3) and decided to build an ornamental city. Every piece or tile has a certain grid and certain interfaces - All pieces can be arranged on any side (see img4 and img5). The system allows you to build a city in random combinations, there is no final image!

My first version (see img6) was drawn with brush pen in black and white, a second version (see img7) is fully vectorized. Finally I decided to add some color to the backgrounds and the objects (see img8). A labyrinth was born!

img1                                                        img2                                                        img3                   

                                     

img4                                                                                                       img5 

img6                                                                                                       img7

                  

img8