A Mathematically Constructed Simulation of Korean Traditional Painting Minhwa (2021)

Within this research, I will reflect upon my personal experience of being raised by my grandmother, a traditional folk painter, and animate one of her paintings with a butterfly. The aim of the research is to create a mathematical model that is computationally light (that is, without use of the Navier-Stokes equations) and is aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Within the research, we use ellipsoids and Catmull-Rom Splines to generate the body and wings of the butterfly. Then, rotational motion using rotational matrices and translation using vectors will be applied to model the movement of the butterfly.

Although the model would be less effective in an academic context due to the many assumptions we made regarding flight and motion, it would still be of much use in the realm of media art, where mathematical or physical accuracy can be compromised for beauty.