Op Art generator

What makes it Op Art

These are the design choices this generator makes or lets you set, as the Stylogeny atlas names them. Each links to every style that makes the same choice.

How this generator works

• One module repeated edge to edge, distorted by a smooth field so the flat surface bulges, flows or turns.
• Maximum value contrast, or two hues of equal value so the edges vibrate.
• Counterchange: across a seam the stripes turn a quarter or the pattern reverses, so the flat field seems to fold.

What it never does:

• No compressed checkerboard square, and no single centred sphere as a default: lenses are placed by the seed and kept off the centre.
• Seams follow the surface: their outlines bend with the same lenses as the pattern, so the fold reads as one illusion.
• Animation moves the pattern at most one band per loop, so a stripe never flickers.

Every picture is a recipe: the variation number and the settings, kept in the page's address. Copy the link and the same picture comes back, in any browser. Random (or R) draws a new variation; ← and → step through them; S shuffles the settings; C borrows another style's colours.

About Op Art Graphics

Op Art (optical art) took hold in the 1960s, when painters and graphic designers found they could make a flat surface move with nothing but a repeated mark and its spacing. The trick is contrast and rhythm: black against white, or two colours of the same lightness, in bands narrow enough that the eye cannot settle on an edge.

This generator works the way those pictures were built: one module, repeated edge to edge, then distorted by a field of lenses and waves. The lenses are placed by the variation number and kept off the centre, so you get a new surface each time rather than a copy of a famous painting.

Op Art Graphics in Stylogeny: 1960–1975, its lineage, its palette, real works and the full set of choices that define it.

Use it from code

The recipe below draws the picture this page opens with. Copy recipe gives you the one on screen. Agents can render recipes to SVG or PNG through Morphogeny's MCP server (morphogeny_render); the same recipe always gives the same SVG.

{
  "tool": "op-art",
  "v": 1,
  "seed": 3,
  "format": "portrait",
  "params": {
    "pattern": "stripes",
    "count": 34,
    "depth": 0.55,
    "lenses": 2,
    "wave": 0.2,
    "progression": 0.3,
    "angle": 0,
    "seam": "squares",
    "colourway": "mono"
  },
  "palette": "op-art"
}

Open this recipe: /op-art/#seed=3&v=1. A plain-text version of this page:/op-art.md.

Other generators

• Swiss grid poster generator: grid posters set in a neutral grotesque
• Bauhaus poster generator: circles, squares and triangles in tension on a diagonal, held by bars and dots
• De Stijl generator: planes of primary colour held by black bars
• Memphis pattern generator: scattered shapes dressed in squiggles, dots and zigzags
• Concrete art generator: one module, repeated and turned by a rule
• Pixel pattern generator: dithered landscapes, 1-bit patterns, sprites and text screens on a coarse pixel grid
• Kinetic type generator: your words filling the frame, moving along their weight and width