One Billion Silhouettes Project

The One Billion Silhouettes Project (also known as 1,000,000,000 Silhouettes Project or, briefly, 1,000,000,000 Project) started in 2007, by an Italian Tangram fan group. [ [http://www.prleap.com/pr/104586/ Nov 23, 2007 PR Leap press release] ] The objective of the project is the creation of a large database of silhouettes, or patterns, based on Tangram or similar dissection puzzles. The almost endless silhouettes generated by a computer program are inserted into the database through the intervention of the human being in choosing, naming and adding comments to each pattern.

History

In 1942, F. T. Wang and C. C. Hsung rigorously demonstrated in the American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 19, that there exist exactly 13 convex figures, which can be obtained with the Tangram pieces. [ [http://www.jstor.org/view/00029890/di991258/99p1529f/0 A Theorem on the Tangram] ]

Convex tangrams are very special and there are so few of them. Ronald C. Read in his book “Tangrams: 330 Puzzles” asked for any other special kinds of tangrams that would be more numerous than the convex ones, and yet not infinite in number. cite book |author=Read, Ronald C. |title=Tangrams : 330 Puzzles |publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York |year= |pages=p.55 |isbn=0-486-21483-4 |oclc= |doi=] He proposed to investigate the "snug tangrams" with the use of a computer.

In 2000 the package “TangMath” was published on Mathsource [ [http://www.mathematica-journal.com/issue/v8i2/newproducts/index-7.html Tangmath] ] , an open directory from the users of the Mathematica system, from Wolfram Research. There were presented some mathematical algorithms to deal with the automatic generation of proper Tangram patterns. In particular, it addressed the no-overlapping constraint for the pieces.

The site “Ten Million of Tangram Patterns” was published in 2001. [ [http://it.geocities.com/tangmath/BillionPatterns.htm#top Ten million of tangram pattern] ] It introduced a classification for the Tangram patterns based on geometrical concepts as convex hull or matching of vertices and edges. The silhouettes ranged from abstract images to human figures or animals, objects etc., in the very basic spirit of the Tangram tradition. The site contains a counting of the elements in a specific subset of Tangram patterns.

Starting 2007, an user-friendly freeware software, called Tanzzle has been downloadable on the site www.tanzzle.com. The software is claimed to be capable of randomly generating an almost endless number of figures. [ [http://mathforum.org/electronic.newsletter/mf.intnews12.3.html "The Math Forum Internet News" Volume 12 No. 3 at Drexel University] ] On the same site the 1,000,000,000 Silhouettes Project started.

On March 13th, 2007, the project was presented [ [http://www.rai.it/TGRrubriche/pub/tgrArticolo/1,8268,,00.html?id_obj=1068497&sezione=24&stato=&larg=&alt= Rai3 - NEA POLIS] ] on the Italian RAI Tre TV channel in the NEA POLIS show.

The Project

The intervention of the human being in choosing, naming and adding comments to each pattern is the distinguishing essence of the database project with respect to the software program. The aesthetic judgment on the figures is considered one of the main choice criteria.The tzl file format used by Tanzzle software is the file format for storing the appropriate information on the patterns. They need less than 100 bytes for typical silhouettes. Therefore as few as 100 Gb is expected to store one billion of patterns, that is the target of the project. Time scheduling has not been declared.

Structure of a tzl file

See also

*The Shapes Project
*Generative art
*Algorithmic art

References

External links

* [http://www.tanzzle.com/progetto.html Tanzzle] link to the 1,000,000,000 ProjectCommons|Category:Tangrams
* [http://www.mallorcaweb.net/tangrampeces/index.htm Tangram]