Soicety

Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how (if we see it in time) we can prevent it.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.html

frieze patterns in earthen art

I have been studying a lot of eco-art therapy. I have this wonderful book "Dig Your Hands in The Dirt: A Manual for Making Art out of Earth" by Kiko Denzer I was reviewing some of the material in this book to get inspiration for a project to do with the kids I work with at CitySprouts.
I noticed that a lot of the tile patterns he uses to make mud mosaic murals are made into frieze patterns. He describes how to make your image more simplified, create a pattern out of it and reverse and repeat the image. The work he does is beautiful and full of symmetry!
P.S. we're trying to start some mud mosaic murals as a part of the eco-expressive therapies group at Lesley- let me know if you're interested!

another escher master piece

I found this by Escher. Its a more complete illustration by him displaying his artistic skills in composition set up and use of the gray scale very effectively. His talent in creating a metamorphosis' are amazing.

origami tesselations

folding paper lamp by Kouichi Okamoto

This beautifully unique lampshade is expertly handcrafted from Denguri paper found locally in the Shikoku region of Japan. The honeycomb paper diffuses the light creating a soft, gentle glow.
It is designed by Kouichi Okamoto, and manufactured by Kyouei Co. Ltd., Japan.
He’s got some rather impressive and unique design concepts- you can see some more information on his designs here.

I just thought that this video pertained to what we were doing in class. Just some cute and creative tessellations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq6eLQihh2M&feature=related

A new look at everything

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/garrett_lisi_on_his_theory_of_everything.html

While brainstorming ideas for the Tessellation project I checked out some work done from artists all around the world. Here's a link to a Tessellation artist data base, http://tessellation.info/?open=general/artistinfo.php&lang=english&style=default.

Looking at this work will help you form a piece of your own.

Wordle

My 10-year-old sister showed me this site! Wordle is a toy for making "word clouds" from text that you enter.  The words you want to put into patterns are arranged randomly by an ingenious program designed by an IBM programmer.  The arrangements are unique in different sizes, fonts, colors and shapes.  (It takes a little while to load so be patient!) Here is one I made.  I have also posted one someone made using Barack Obama's 2004 speech.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Photographer Yann Arthus - Bertrand is aiming to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living.  He has been photographing our planet from above since 1994.  His images are amazing!  Click here to see more.  

Digitized books

I was just looking around and found this very interesting. Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html

Math and art

I found this website which shows a project that I thought looked pretty cool. From what I gathered, they made this whole structure out of a bunch of hexagons arranged in different shapes. The final result is pretty big and impressive.

Tessellation project

I wikipedia(ed) tessellations and through clicking links i came upon Tiling with Regular Polygons.
There were a lot of different cool graph paper-ish ideas that could be helpful for the project we have. If you click on the image there is a bigger version that you can print and doodle on. I thought this pattern could be really interesting to try and make a design with.

Tessellation Program

I found a program that makes tessellations for you, like Kali makes wallpaper patterns.  It is fun and definitely useful.  Here it is!

Pattern Artists

I found these two portfolio websites this summer of illustrators who do patterns. If you go to the pattern sections of their portfolios you can see that many of them were actually purchased and printed on merchandise. Many of the patterns don't have reflection or rotation, just translation. They are, however, really cute.

Julia Rothman

Helen Dardik

Tessellation in class

So during class today we were all tessellating with rectangles, parallelograms and triangles. that was easy enough, but when question 6 asked us to use a shape that was a little weirder it was really a challenge. I admit that instead of paying attention to what came next in class i continued to work on this shape. I was going to make it work. And i did! check it out! (look only at the dark blue lines)

James Nahtwey

This is important. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_nachtwey_fights_xdrtb.html

Wallpaper artists

I was stumbling around the internet and I came across this website full of wallpaper design artists.....there are some unique designs and some terrible ones but there are many artists to choose from with multiple pieces, check them out.....they also show some images of the machines used to print the paper. here's the link "http://www.wallpapersbyartists.com/"

MC Escher

This web page has a few short videos about Escher and his work. The videos show a slightly different view of his patterns than what we are doing in class. The interviews are in black and white and subtitled, but I suggest you watch them just to see Escher's silly beard. In one interview he talks about how he was supposed to be an architect but he chose to be a graphic artist instead. There is even a video of him making a wood carving for one of his prints, which I thought was very cool.

The many ways and shapes to math.

so i was searching online for something cool and interesting to put onto my post, and i finally stumbled upon this site. basically it's what we have been doing in class just interpreted in a diffrent way, and with a different flow chart (which was what i think the teacher was saying that there are a bunch of different ways to categories frieze patterns and so many mathematicians use these other types of charts to decipher frieze patterns). So i tryed it and it is pretty difficult since i'm used to the p-_ _ _ system. But it's fun to see what you get out of this system, don't try too hard cause this should just be fun. And also it shows different types of patterns for different cultures, time periods etc. Its an interesting little article not too long take a look.

http://www.phschool.com/atschool/math_activity_library/frieze_frames_s.html