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Thursday, May 15, 2014

Moonshine

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning
of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not
typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside,
enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

Photo of full moon over Oslo last night by Josefine Lyche:

A scene from my film viewing last night:

Some background (click to enlarge):

Note:

The “I, Frankenstein” scene above should not be interpreted as
a carrying of Martin Gardner through a lyche gate.  Gardner
is, rather, symbolized by the asterisk in the first image from
the above Google search.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Epiphany

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“… the object sets up a kind of 
 frame or space or field 
 within which there can be epiphany.”

Charles Taylor

A frame or space or field —

IMAGE- The ninefold square

Related material —

Star Wars (January 11, 2014),

The Lyche Gate Asterisk , from 10:31 AM ET on May 22, 2010,
the date of Martin Gardner's death —

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

— and the March 2014 issue of the
Notices of the American Mathematical Society  —

See as well Epiphany 2014 (Jan. 6) in this journal and the
March Notices  on the Shaw prize —

"Established under the auspices of Run Run Shaw
in November 2002, the prize is managed and
administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation
based in Hong Kong." 

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Sermon

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:30 am

From Galleri MGM in Oslo —

IMAGE- 'PRESS RELEASE' headline

Josefine Lyche
Theme and Variations
26. February – 28. March 2009
Opening reception 26. February 19.00 – 21.00

"Why do we remember the past, but not the future?"
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Ch. 9, "The Arrow of Time"

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."
George Orwell

Galleri MGM is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by Josefine Lyche (b.1973).

Lyche presents a body of work consisting of sculptures and a wall painting, as well as a series of new paperwork, all using geometrical abstractions and light as a medium. Her work dissolves boundaries between fiction and documentation, depicting how fantasies and dreams collide with and yet help determine the shape of reality.

Theme and variations is a term most commonly used in the music genre as a musical form in which the fundamental musical idea, or theme, is repeated in altered form or accompanied in a different manner.

The exhibition explores geometric shapes and solids and revisits work of artists like Robert Morris and Ellsworth Kelly, giving it a disco treatment of glitter, neon and gloss. The mathematical, science-fiction and new age references incorporated in the works comments on the ambivalent foretelling of utopian hope and dystopian vision of a near, yet unknown future.

The transmission between past and future is shown in the sculpture "The Omega Point" a portal that leads in or out of time and space. …

A connection to today's earlier post, Sunday SchoolThe Oslo Version, from Friday, May 21, 2010.

Lyche's "Omega Point" portal, together with her last name, suggested three posts from the following Saturday morning— which later proved to be the date of Martin Gardner's death—

Art Space, Through the Lyche Gate and The Lyche Gate Asterisk.

For some further religious remarks, see November 9th, 2010— A Theory of Pure Design.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Design

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

A Theory of Pure Design

by Denman Waldo Ross

Lecturer on the Theory of Design
in Harvard University

Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907

PREFACE

"My purpose in this book is to elucidate, so far as I can, the
principles which underlie the practice of drawing and painting
as a Fine Art.  Art is generally regarded as the expression of
feelings and emotions which have no explanation except per-
haps in such a word as inspiration , which is expletive rather
than explanatory
.  Art is regarded as the one activity of man
which has no scientific basis, and the appreciation of Art is
said to be a matter of taste in which no two persons can be
expected to agree.  It is my purpose in this book to show how,
in the practice of Art, as in all other practices, we use certain
terms and follow certain principles.  Being defined and ex-
plained, these terms and principles may be known and under-
stood by everybody.  They are, so to speak, the form of the
language
.

While an understanding of the terms and principles of Art
will not, in itself, enable any one to produce important works,
such works are not produced without it.  It must be understood,
however, that the understanding of terms and principles
is not, necessarily, an understanding in words.  It may lie in
technical processes and in visual images and may never rise,
or shall I say fall, to any formulation in words, either spoken
or written."

_________________________________________________

One of Ross's protégés, Jack Levine, died yesterday at 95. He
is said to have remarked, "I want to paint with the dead ones."

Related material: This journal on the day of Levine's death
and on the day of Martin Gardner's death.

The latter post has an image illustrating Ross's remarks on
formulations in words—
 

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

For further details, see Finale, Darkness Visible, and Packed.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Omega at Eight

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 pm

The "compact key to universal wisdom" passage in the previous post seemed
too well written to be the work of an anonymous webforum author.

Here is a slightly expanded version—

Throughout history mystics and philosophers have sought
a compact key to universal wisdom, a finite formula or text
that would provide the answer to every question. The use of
the Bible, the Koran and the I Ching for divination and the
tradition of the secret books of Hermes Trismegistus and the
medieval Jewish Cabala exemplify this belief or hope.  Such
sources of universal wisdom are traditionally protected from
casual use by being difficult to find as well as difficult to un-
derstand and dangerous to use, tending to answer more quest-
ions and deeper ones than the searcher wishes to ask. The
esoteric book is, like God, simple yet undescribable. It is om-
niscient, and it transforms all who know it. The use of clas-
sical texts to foretell mundane events is considered supersti-
tious nowadays, yet in another sense science is in quest of its
own Cabala, a concise set of natural laws that would explain
all phenomena. In mathematics, where no set of axioms can
hope to prove all true statements, the goal might be a concise
axiomatization of all "interesting" true statements.
      Ω is in many senses a Cabalistic number. It can be known
of through human reason, but not known. To know it in detail
one must accept its uncomputable sequence of digits on faith,
like words of a sacred text.   

This is Martin Gardner's* and Charles H. Bennett's
revised version of a passage from Bennett's  paper
"On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers," 1979.

The original passage from Bennett's paper—

Throughout history mystics and philosophers have sought a compact key to
universal wisdom, a finite formula or text which, when known and understood,
would provide the answer to every question. The Bible, the Koran, the mythical
secret books of Hermes Trismegistus, and the medieval Jewish Cabala have
been so regarded. Sources of universal wisdom are traditionally protected from
casual use by being hard to find, hard to understand when found, and dangerous
to use, tending to answer more and deeper questions than the user wishes to
ask. Like God the esoteric book is simple yet undescribable, omniscient, and
transforms all who know It. The use of classical texts to fortell [sic] mundane events
is considered superstitious nowadays, yet, in another sense, science is in quest of
its own Cabala, a concise set of natural laws which would explain all phenomena.
In mathematics, where no set of axioms can hope to prove all true statements,
the goal might be a concise axiomatization of all "interesting" true statements.
      Ω is in many senses a Cabalistic number. It can be known of, but not known,
through human reason. To know it in detail, one would have to accept its un-
computable digit sequence on faith, like words of a sacred text.

The Bennett paper deals with Gregory Chaitin's concept of an "Omega Number."

I prefer the Omega of Josefine Lyche—

Image-- Uncertified copy of 1986 figures by Cullinane in a 2009 art exhibit in Oslo

Click for further details.

See also All Hallows' Eve, 2002.

* Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games  column
"The Random Number Omega Bids Fair to Hold the Mysteries of the Universe,"
Scientific American, November 1979, 241(5), pp. 20–34.
The column is reprinted as "Chaitin's Omega," Ch. 21, pp. 307-319 in the
collection of Gardner's columns titled Fractal Music, Hypercards and More,
W.H. Freeman & Co., 1991

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