Process
At first, I was unsure what this assignment meant, especially how a programming concept could be translated into a physical metaphor. Once I understood the task better, I came up with several possible ideas. I initially wanted to explore a more complex concept (Idea 1), but I also considered a simpler idea that would be easier to realise in physical form (Idea 2).
Idea 1
Figures 1 through 6 visualise an if/else statement in physical form. The model begins with the question, "Is the pen red?", which represents the condition being tested. If the answer is true, the pen follows the "True" branch, leading to the outcome "The pen is red." If the answer is false, it follows the "False" branch, leading to the outcome "The pen is not red." Figures 3 and 4 show a red pen moving through the model and exiting through the true branch, while Figures 5 and 6 show a green pen exiting through the false branch. The forked structure of the model makes the decision-making process visible: one condition leads to one path, while the alternative leads to another. This reflects how an if/else statement in programming evaluates a condition and selects only one of two possible outcomes. In this way, the object becomes a physical metaphor for conditional logic.
Figure 1. Top-down view of the "If/Else" statement.
Figure 2. Sideview of the "If/Else" statement.
Figure 3. Red pen entering the "If/Else" statement.
Figure 4. Red pen leaving the "If/Else" statement through "True/If".
Figure 5. Green pen entering the "If/Else" statement.
Figure 6. Green pen leaving the "If/Else" statement through "False/Else".
Idea 2
This was actually the first and simplest idea I came up with. The mirror images in Figures 7 and 8 visualise recursion through self-reference. The camera captures a scene that contains the same camera and scene again, creating smaller and smaller nested versions of the same image. This is similar to a recursive function, which solves a problem by calling itself on a smaller version of that problem. The image also shows that recursion is not endless in practice: at a certain point, the repeated images fade or disappear, just as recursion must reach a stopping condition to end. In this way, the mirror becomes a physical metaphor for both the structure and the limit of recursion.
Image 7. Recursion (vertical).
