Tessellations are used everywhere around us like in architecture, design, art, chemistry, biology, computer science, nature, and so much more.
Tessellations are all about patterns and symmetry which can be found all around us. Carpet patterns, clothing patterns, windows, floor tiles, food, art, building architecture, and the list
could go on and on. Yes they are pretty and fun to make, but there are so many ways that tessellations can be used and are found in our world. Art has an enormous
amount of tessellations and a great number of them come from Escher. Not only did he produce 2D tessellations, but he also created 3D tessellations and 2D tessellations that looked 3D.
Nature
Music
In an acceptance speech for the Culture Prize of the City of Hilversum, Escher expressed a few words about tessellations and the relation they have to music. "I had better not expound on
the affinity I seem to have discovered between the canon in polyphonic music and the regular division of a plane into figures with identical forms, no matter how striking it is to me
that the Baroque composers have performed manipulations with sounds similar to the ones I love to do with visual images. Allow me to say only that Father Bach has been a strong inspiration
to me, and that many a print reached definite form in my mind while I was listening to the lucid, logical language he speaks, while I was drinking the clear wine he pours." (Escher, 1989)
Design
Both of the backgrounds on this page are popular designs, but are also tessellations. There are so many tessellation that can be found in design. Often the basic pattern on a shirt
is a tessellation.
