M. C. Escher spiral in WebGL inspired by 3Blue1Brown

In plain words

This WebGL implementation recreates the M. C. Escher print gallery effect as a fragment shader, inspired by a 3Blue1Brown video explaining the mathematical concept. The tool is designed for anyone interested in interactive visualizations of mathematical art and complex geometric transformations. It demonstrates how the spiraling distortion effect can be rendered efficiently in the browser using modern graphics techniques.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Select an image file from your computer. For best results prefer square SVG images. See this fantastic 3Blue1Brown video for an in depth explanation. To summarize: The original idea is popularized by M. C. Escher in their artworks. The droste effect is the idea of embedding a smaller version of an image into itself leading to an (theoretically) infinitely repeating recursive depth. Escher took this idea even further by breaking the boundary between two recursive images and morphing them together. This leads to the visual impression that there are no separate instances of a repeated image but just a single image spiraling inwards. This effect can also be recognized as strange loop as done by…from static.laszlokorte.de

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