SPACELACE

One of the very first Apple programs I saw was Color Soft Demo. It generated one four-sided kaleidoscope after another so fast that all I saw was a blur of colored square patterns. Color Soft Demo was the software demo that convinced me I could make art on a computer and piqued my interest in creating moving kaleidoscopes on a computer. The experience of writing SpaceLace is instructive about symmetry, movement, and how to teach a computer to create a kaleidoscope that moves.

In 1987, Great Wave Software published our educational program, SpaceLace: An Interactive Kaleidoscope. Carol Holzberg, Ph.D., reviewed SpaceLace for The Apple IIgs Buyer's Guide. This is an excerpt from the review:

"What purpose does a program like SpaceLace serve? If this were the 1960s and a user was a self-identified hippie, providing a constantly changing color pattern on an RGB monitor might have an intrinsic "wow value." Nostalgia aside, Space Lace offers more than simple entertainment. It is a great learning tool and a valuable computer literacy aide."

When we put SpaceLace inside the five-foot kaleidoscope, the effect was transcendent. We showed SpaceLace in the Art Show at SIGGRAPH in 1987. It was a big success, and many were pleased that the Apple II was being showcased. After SIGGRAPH, the SpaceLace kaleidoscope was shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry as part of Computer Graphics State of the Art. SpaceLace is also exhibited in Huaca.