July 06, 2009

4th Dimension, Visualizations

A fascinating pop science video introduction to visualizing 4th dimensional polyhedrons.

To me there is something of an aesthetic and to a lesser extent geometric echo between these and some of the compositional elements I'm interested in in my work, where I am trying to evoke a sense of a person passing through both observed time and the memory of that time.

The still object of a painting often does not represent stillness any more than it represents flatness. It is a two dimensional object that tends to create illusions of both space and time, but perceptually and emotionally, rather than mathematically- however, I notice some interesting similarities between the actual path of my 2-d lines, particularly while being made, and the path of the 2-d video representations of a 4th dimensional polyhedron passing through the illusion of 3-d space, which of course is actually represented by 2-d space.

The math? Sorry, not in my job description.

2 Comments:

Blogger The Sum of All Monkeys said...

Dear God.

Why wasn't this around when I was studying this sort of math?

I only got as far as transformations (chapter 6?) but they did a far better job in 15 minutes than my high school math Prof did in 4 months.

Maybe all he needed at the time was an animated blackboard.

Or maybe all I needed at the time was a glass of scotch and a desire to actually learn the subject.

Nice find!

July 6, 2009 at 11:44 PM  
Blogger JAB said...

I've made it through the 5th one- I have to say I responded much better to these geometric proofs of imaginary numbers. It made perfect sense visually. I regret this, because I might have enjoyed math.

July 7, 2009 at 9:11 AM  

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