I have been toying with the idea of constructing animated kaleidoscopes in Flash for a while. I recently took a bit of time out to do a few experiments. These are all essentially the same program, with different source images used in a 30 degree triangle mask, which is mirrored and then repeated around the circle. The script then oscillates the velocity of rotation of the entire kaleidoscope.

The first four below use beautiful bitmap images of spirals that were coded in Apophysis by Neil Slater in the UK. (You Can see Neil's work on his DeviantArt gallery at slobo777.deviantart.com/gallery) Fractals are ideal images as they already include a certain degree of structural pattern/repetition, which is obviously augmented when they are based on the spiral structure. If you are a mathematics of complexity wizard, you will know and understand this better than I do. If however you are a mere mortal like the rest of us, take my word for it or try to see what i mean in these four images below.

Beneath them I have placed one using a normal photographic images as graphic phodder. This image is subjected to normal linear tweening animation behind the mask, but over a cycle that differs in length from the over-all velocity cycle, so each time the spinning slows down and changes direction there is a different part of the image behind the mask.

I would love to develop these ideas further at some point, perhaps making them interactively manipulate as a VJ application that allows the VJ (Visual DJ) to manipulate them in response to music (- I already have most of the coding figured out in some of the corners of my mind, just have to find the time to get it out of there and into code.) Or use them in the interactive PA screen saver app I also want to put together sometime.

I have no idea if these things are safe for epilepsy sufferers to stare at - I hope they are - and trust that epilepsy sufferers would know best.

There is a significant amount of computation happening in each of these kaleidoscopes and having them all together on a page like this may be putting a tad much stress on your machine's processor. For best playback click on the caption of any of these to open it in a separate window (at their native size of between 760 and 800 pixels across) or download it to your machine if you wish.