'Random Close Packing'
Artist's narrative
Artist's narrative

           This piece represents random close packing research, which focuses on how granular piles of varied size circles randomly pack together such that they cannot be compressed further.  It involves a complete rejection of order and structure and begins with placing circles randomly in a single plane.  In this case the circular container has extra thickness so different random packing conformations can be created by turning the large container. Granular piles are often composed of grains with many different sizes to them, in this case limited to 4 sizes, each a different color and opacity. The research looks at skewness, a measure of how much larger or smaller each particle is than the average.  They are meant to be viewed with some amount of backlighting and held/moved to illustrate the beautiful random formations created by random close packing.