Shape

102 I What Makes It Visual?
There’s a choice here because the triangle is bilaterally symmetric—if I reflect it,
nothing changes in what I see. So I can apply the rule both ways. Moreover, the chevron
should still be where it was to start—at least according to the rule. That’s the
pickle. What seems to be possible doesn’t include what I want
I have to replace the triangle and the chevron in the shape
with another triangle in a new orientation, and a chevron that’s been reversed.
One after the other, the translations in my two rules don’t add up in the desired
way. No matter what I do with the rules, I can’t reorient the triangle. There’s no
way to reverse its direction. And I can’t apply either of the rules to the chevron.
There’s no way to change it, period. Reflecting these figures together as a pair is impossible
with the rules I’ve got. The local changes they make are just too restricted to produce
the global transformation I’m looking for. However, it’s awfully hard to see
everything in your head if you plan too far in advance—even a couple of easy steps
with opposite translations—when there’s visual calculating to do. Then, it’s usually
better to draw.
Let’s stop thinking and see what happens. There’s a way out of my predicament
when I approach it visually, so that a shape can be a shape it’s not. It’s easy to apply
my rules to define the shapes in this series