Gaudi

In class we spoke of the ways in which an artist can find a solution to a "mathematical" problem in a piece of art by using calculation or through trial and error - an often correct and faster method. I spent my fall semester in Barcelona, Spain last year living down the street from Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia. We spoke of him in all of my courses, with particular emphasis on his precision of detail and innovative architectural techniques. I guess I had just assumed he was a mathematician of sorts to make such brave choices in his designs, but as it turns out, he used little math. This discovery fascinates me. I have copied a bit about one of his techniques below:

"Gaudí spent ten years working on studies for the design, and developing a new method of structural calculation based on a stereostatic model built with cords and small sacks of pellets. The outline of the church was traced on a wooden board (1:10 scale), which was then placed on the ceiling of a small house next to the work site. Cords were hung from the points where columns were to be placed. Small sacks filled with pellets, weighing one ten-thousandth part of the weight the arches would have to support, were hung from each catenaric arch formed by the cords. Photographs were taken of the resulting model from various angles, and the exact shape of the church's structure was obtained by turning them upside-down obtaining therefore the form, absolutely precise and exact, of the structure of the building, without having to have conducted an operation of calculation and without possibility of error. The forms of cords corresponded to the lines of tension of the prim structure and when inverting the photo, the lines of pressure of the compressed structure were obtained. An absolutely exact and simple method, giving an example of the intuitive and elementary methods that Gaudí applied in its architecture and that allowed him to obtain balanced forms very similar to which nature offers."

Inspiration for our patterns

(Micro landscape - nano-scale titanium crystals on the surface of an orthopaedic implant magnified 70,000 times... cool!)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/content/image_galleries/paul_gunning_microsope_images_gallery.shtml?3

there are some really nice images of patterns here, the photographs are being presented as visual art, but could also be looked at from a very scientific or mathematic eye. or all three simultaneously which probably offers a deeper undertsanding of what is going on.
it is interseting beacuse these really beautiful patterns exist everywhere and what this photographer has done is focus our eyes on some very tiny ones...

A good term refresher course

I found this very helpful when trying to describe the shapes we found and created in class and in our homework.

As I was reading about Escher's life and work in the textbook, one pattern in particular caught my attention (pg. 9). I have used Moroccan patterns in my art before, and enjoy filling spaces with geometric pattern as a way to catch the eye. Here are some additional Moroccan patterns that I found very interesting.

Ok so i was listening to this new song "swagger like us", and i was thinking about math art and design. i was wracking my head for an interesting post, something with substance, and then it came to me the song that i was listening to has the properties that we are learning about. Although i know this may not be the ideal concept of this course i still feel it works. Everyone knows music is defiantly an aspect of art i.e. Mozart, Beethoven etc, it has never been questioned, but listening to this song i realized the composer Kanye West took another song "Paper Planes" extracted a single line "swagger like us" looped it and shortened it and elongated it a bunch of times added base drums trumpets and an abundance of others sounds and he made this the beat. And what i love about this idea is the abstraction of this one song. He is known to take songs and take a line and make it apart of the beat, however normally it is only apart of the beat it is never the beat itself, the abstraction of these words by Kanye is amazing. and the way i think this is a good blog for the site is because the artistic aspect of the beat is great. He designed it through abstraction which is what Escher did; repition through abstraction with a lot of his pieces. and although this is something you hear rather than see it is still in the same context the math is in the numbers of the beats and the precision of the melody. It is an amazing idea that Kanye created.

Photosynth

Last semester, my friend shared this video with me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkuGrCB85H8

Photosynth is a program that almost completely is over my head as far as understanding is concerned. However, this link will help better explain how it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Live_Labs_Photosynth

Essentially, the relevance and similarities I found between this program and MC Escher's paintings is the ability to make things that are actually 1 dimensional and make them into 3 dimensional. For instance, MC Escher took a 1 dimensional canvas and turned it into this 3 dimensional drawing using shading.

http://aaronbaird.net/pictures/Escher/Hand_with_reflecting_globe.jpg

The video I linked you all to explains how Photosynth does the same thing with 1 dimensional photographs by collectively turning them all into one 3 dimensional image. I think it's really neat.

Architecture is Geometric

I was looking through my brothers architectural books and came across some interesting information....
When most people think of symmetry they think of basic line symmetry. In architecture, symmetry is a way to describe shapes and design and to organize geometry. One architectural feature where symmetry is evident is a frieze design. A frieze design consists of repeated copies, along a line, of a single figure or block. Frieze patterns can be seen on walls, railings, verandas, etc. These patterns can be seen in art and architecture around the world.