Art

String Art

← All Exhibits

Every thread in this artwork is straight, yet together they create the appearance of a smooth curved shape called a nephroid. The curve emerges as the envelope of many carefully arranged straight lines.

A nephroid is a two-cusped mathematical curve that can also be generated by rolling one circle around the outside of another. Remarkably, the same shape appears in optics as a caustic — a bright curve formed when parallel rays of light reflect from the inside of a circular surface.

Additional Information

Every string is a straight line, pinned between two points on the circle’s edge. No string is curved at all — the swirling, curved-looking shape you see is an illusion created purely by how hundreds of straight lines overlap.