. Frozen Harmonics

Digital art inspired by physics, based on spherical harmonic functions, created with custom code (No AI).

5000x5000 jpg image.

There is no watermark in the high-resolution image.

(c) elkement 2024, https://elkement.art

For personal / internal use: Create wall art for your home or personal office by having this image printed or display it on a screen.

Not permitted: Usage on websites, in printed publications, with products for sale. Contact me if you would be interested in a license for such purposes.

You encounter spherical harmonics when calculating the quantum mechanical wave function for the hydrogen atom. These functions are the building blocks of the lobe-shaped orbitals known from chemistry.

Just as any periodic function – as spiky as it may be – can be built up from sine and cosine waves of different frequencies, any function on a sphere can be built from a basis of spherical harmonic functions.

Here, I’ve tried to use just one these basic functions. Each set of longitude and latitude is assigned a value – like the distance from the origin at that combination of angles.

I visualize surfaces via delicate contour lines: I draw lines on all these lobes, keeping either the longitude or the latitude constant. This is a mesh of lines in three-dimensional space, a virtual sculpture.

I am creating JavaScript code based on the framework three.js to bring this to life (No AI). I am scaling the whole sculpture and I am nesting several of them, coloring the contour lines on each of the meshes differently. Then I rotate it and pan my virtual camera to find an interesting viewpoint.