The visual mind II

717 Pages·2005·7.645 MB·English

by  Michele Emmer

he isual ind II
T V M
Michele Emmer
edited by
The Visual Mind II
leonardo
Roger F. Malina, series editor
The Visual Mind, edited by Michele Emmer, 1993
Leonardo Almanac, edited by Craig Harris, 1994
Designing Information Technology, Richard Coyne, 1995
Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Anne Moser
with Douglas MacLeod, 1996
Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, Richard
Coyne, 1999
Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program, edited by Craig
Harris, 1999
The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, edited by Peter Lunenfeld, 1999
The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet,
edited by Ken Goldberg, 2000
The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich, 2000
Metal and Flesh: The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, Ollivier Dyens, 2001
Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia, Geert Lovink, 2002
Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, Stephen Wilson, 2002
Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, 2003
Women, Art, and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, 2003
Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization, Alexander R. Galloway, 2004
At a Distance:Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, edited by Annmarie
Chandler and Norie Neumark, 2005
The Visual Mind II, edited by Michele Emmer, 2005
CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy, edited by Rishab Aiyer
Ghosh, 2005
From Technological to Virtual Art, Frank Popper, 2005
The Visual Mind II
edited by Michele Emmer
The MIT Press
Cambridge,Massachusetts
London,England
© 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The visual mind II / edited by Michele Emmer.
p. cm. — (Leonardo)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-05076-5 (hc : alk. paper)
1. Art—Mathematics. 2. Geometry. 3. Aesthetics. I. Title: Visual mind 2. II.
Title: Visual mind two. III. Emmer, Michele. IV. Leonardo (Series) (Cambridge,
Mass.)
N72.M3V58 2005
701¢.5—dc22
2004057850
To
Valeria
Max Bill
Fred Almgren
H. S. M. Coxeter

Contents
introduction
Michele Emmer xi
Section 1 Mathematics and Aesthetics 1
1 the phenomenology of mathematical beauty
Gian-Carlo Rota 3
2 mathematical beauty and the evolution of the standards
of mathematical proof
James W. McAllister 15
3 aesthetics for computers, or how to measure harmony
Jaroslav Neˇsetˇril 35
4 visual mathematics: mathematics and art
Michele Emmer 59
Section 2 Geometry and Art 91
5 life through art
Carmen Bonell 95
6 john robinson’s symbolic sculptures: knots and
mathematics
Ronald Brown 125
7 geometries of curvature and their aesthetics
Brent Collins 141
8 poetry in curves: the guggenheim museum in bilbao
Giuseppa Di Cristina 159
9 eightfold way: the sculpture
Helaman Ferguson with Claire Ferguson 187
10 the geometric aesthetic
George W. Hart 215
11 art and the age of the sciences
Charles Perry 235
12 some aspects of the use of geometry in my artistic work
Sylvie Pic 253
Section 3 Mathematics and Art 269
13 local/global in mathematics and painting
CapiCorralesRodrigáñezwithanAppendixbyLauraTedeschini-Lalli 273
14 visual knots: concerning geometry and visuality in the
work of marcel duchamp
Manuel Corrada 309
15 lunda symmetry: where geometry meets art
Paulus Gerdes 335
16 four-dimensional space or space-time? the emergence
of the cubism-relativity myth in new york in the 1940s
Linda Dalrymple Henderson 349
17 “reverse perspective”: historical fallacies and an
alternative view
Clemena Antonova and Martin Kemp 399
18 four-dimensional projection: art and reality
Tony Robbin 433
19 rational design versus artistic intuition in stained-
glass art
Tomás García Salgado 449
Section 4 Geometry,Computer Graphics,and Art 469
20 dynamics, chaos, and design
Michael Field 473
21 paul klee on computer: biomathematical models help us
understand his work
Roberto Giunti 495
22 parameterized sculpture families
Carlo H. Séquin 527
23 the aesthetic value of optimal geometry
John M. Sullivan 547
Contents
viii
Section 5 Mathematics,Visualization,and Cinema 565
24 mathematics and cinema
Michele Emmer 569
25 some organizing principles
Peter Greenaway 601
26 figures and characters in the great book of nature
Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond 623
27 circle packings and the sacred lotus
Tibor Tarnai and Koji Miyazaki 647
28 meander mazes on polysphericons
Anthony Phillips 667
contributors 685
name index 689
subject index 697
Contents
ix