Domes and fractals

This is the artwork we were supposed to do with the five graphs on it. Here, I've chosen a square on the graph paper drawing only that small area where all of the graphs have common points. Then outside the square the lines squiggle away and have their equations written on the side. To make it more interesting, I pleated various mountain and valley folds in areas outside of the square to give it large, rough crinkles while keeping the square in the middle clean and smooth. The pleats raised the smooth part up as well emphasising the contrast between the surfaces.


Now fast forward to today. Once again I had a near death experience from pure boredom. I know what I'm saying is harsh and mean, but if I didn't say anything does it change the truth? If I packaged it into softer words it's still saying the same thing: It was incredibly boring.

Nonetheless, a very rare few instances in the lecture actually talked about things that I liked. For example, curves in architecture and fractals.

For curves in architecture an example we talked about was the beautiful Gaudi Cathedral in Barcelona.

Figure 1: Gaudi Cathedral in Barcelona, an unfinished work of architect Antoni Gaudi. (Source: Telegraph, 2008)

My favourite examples of curves though has to be in Roman architecture. Their domes in their cathedrals, their amazing aqueducts and of course the Colosseum. They're huge, strong, impressive, and last for a long time. In my view, there's no point in building anything impressive if it's not going to last, which is why I really like their architectural work. I think they stand this long because circles are really strong, which is one reason why they're my favourite shape.

Here you can read about interesting techniques the Romans used in building which we still use today. (Flinn, 2011) A few of them do have strong curves in them such as the dome, the Roman aqueducts, and the Cloaca Maxima, their sewerage system.

I think I've talked about fractals before in previous blogs, if not I've definitely mentioned them on several other instances for studio work and Intro to Creative Tech paper.

Anyway, fractals are absolutely beautiful. There's not way to deny that it's math and it can't be denied that it's art either. What I love about them is how you take one simple thing, and repeat it over and over to create one complex whole. The small parts then look exactly the same as the whole, which is really beautiful as well. My favourite place for finding fractals is on DeviantArt. Sometimes the artists give you their parameters in the artist's comments should you want to create a similar fractal yourself. I'd like to try making a fractal some time, once I figure out how to get started with a program.


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Flinn, G. (2011). 10 Coon Engineering Tricks the Romans Taught Us. Retrieved August 20, 2011, from http://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/10-roman-engineering-tricks.htm

Telegraph. (2008). The time is right for buzzy Barcelona. Retrieved August 29, 2011, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/spain/barcelona/737542/The-time-is-right-for-buzzy-Barcelona.html

Math in Art: What does beauty mean in math?

I'm going to be honest, that was the most boring lecture I've had thus far and I nearly died from absolute boredom.

Now let's talk about just a few things that are actually worth blogging about because it's actually fun and interesting.

Right at the beginning we got shown some artworks that literally had math in them. Meaning the actual equations, numbers and so on are written right on to the artwork or even just the equation by itself as a stand alone art piece.

Figure 1. Justin Mullins' Entanglement (Source: Centripetal Notion, 2006)

We got questioned: Is that art?

I'd say it can be art depending on how you look at it. For example, if you manipulated the characters in some way like you do with letters and words in typography, then that's definitely art. As a plain written equation however, I think the art/beauty is in what the equation does as opposed to its written, physical form.

In that case, what is beauty in math?

Beauty is subjective so that's hard to say, but for me beauty is definitely simplicity. So for me the beauty in math would be the simplest and quickest solution to a problem. I think beauty can also be what the equation actually does. For example, if an equation makes a line I like on a graph then that would be a beautiful equation. Fractals are also formed from equations if you're looking at fractal art. I think they're beautiful too.

Beauty in math can also be the numbers themselves. I have a preference for specific numbers, such as zeroes and twos. Zero for me is special, because it's like a circle. To me it's the beginning and end of everything. You start off with zero, it grows, then something horrible happens and you end up with nothing (zero). After that, it grows again--and so the cycle repeats. For twos I only like 2 alone, 12, or multiple twos such as 22,222,2222,22222, and so on. Twos feel clean, sleek, organised, and tidy. It reminds me of people as well. 12 is the only exception. I think 12 is a beautiful number. I don't completely know why, but I think it's because I associate 12 with the stars because of the 12 zodiac signs. I love astronomy and going out to see stars through my telescope.

Therefore, yes, math can be art and there is beauty in math. At least for me there is.


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Centripetal Notion. (2006). Justin Mullins: Mathematical Photography. Retrieved August 22, 2011, from http://centripetalnotion.com/2006/02/09/00:45:38/

Where does thinking come from?

For last week's lecture I made my ideal NZ flag, personal coat of arms, and a little logo for after uni as required.


This is my flag, which I coloured in with crayon. It's supposed to be a much more vivid black. For NZ, the international sports teams are almost always either black or white in their representation of colour. They're one of the most common colours associated with NZ. With the white I also went with how NZ is also called "Land of the Long White Cloud", which is why there's a thin white stripe in the middle and a more elongated flag.


My favourite was making the personal coat of arms. This was was done with several stencils I made of the design and acrylic paints. The shapes used there are based on the letters in my name, but made to look a lot less obvious. This works in combination to the lock shape in the middle, showing that I'm a very private person and I'm very cautious about who I let in to my personal life. The minimal use of red shows how I have little to no attachment to my place of birth, Hong Kong, China. I never got to know Hong Kong, which is why I'll be returning there in the Summer to visit a whole lot of relatives I don't know well.


Personally, I don't think the logo is very well done. For this one it's a very simplified eye, because I like to observe people and understand how they work and think. I have no clue what I'd like to do after uni, so this eye logo shows my interest in understanding how things, specifically people, work.


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Today's focus of the lecture was recreation involving math and art. Unfortunately, I felt uninspired and completely bored despite my love for playgrounds and other fun things like that.

However, when we got to talking about different types of thinking, that's when I got interested.

Where does thinking come from? What is thinking, and what is awareness? Is emotion a type of thinking process?

I think the origins of thinking is a mystery. Thus, I can't answer that question. You can say that it's cells in the brain, but they simply send messages across a network of cells and tell different parts of the brain to release different chemicals. In this sense, thinking is just a bunch of chemicals happening in your brain. But it feels like thinking is more than that. For a start, where do those messages in those cells come from and what makes the brain decide that these specific chemicals should be released? I'd want to know about that, mostly because I'm curious and because I want to be able to read minds, since I think that would be interesting and fun.

For me thinking is the process of formulating a thought, which then becomes an idea. Awareness is then processing little details that you don't normally notice on a daily basis. In class Andy talked about the Buddhist approach, how a greater awareness is sought after through meditation, where "thinking is not thinking". I don't meditate, but I have had several instances where I literally couldn't think. It's a really strange experience. Normally, when you try to not thinking about anything, you end up thinking about not thinking about anything. But when it happens completely by accident it's really strange. When it happened, I couldn't think or process anything at all. Even the sense of sight was ignored. Yes, I see everything in my familiar computer room, but nothing registered into a thought. There WAS no thought, or thinking happening. Everything was so strangely quiet, except there was a slight buzzing and humming in my ear. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised I wasn't breathing either. At first it's really scary, but after the first time it's a very calming experience that you learn to appreciate. I guess you could say that by not thinking it does make it easier to focus, think, and be more aware of your surroundings. After having those mind blanks I always feel lighter and I always forget about the usual things I worry about. It really clears up your head.

Now on to the big question. Is emotion a thinking process?

James mentioned how there's always been the association of emotion with the heart, as something separate from thinking in the brain. I think that depends on the purpose/reason for thinking, and it also changes from person to person. In Chinese, each character has a part of it that gives you a hint on what that word is to do with. For example, if the word has associations with water there's usually three dashes in the character to represent three drops of water. The characters for any word to do with thinking and emotion, all have the part of the symbol that means heart. A lot of Chinese phrases to do with thinking also emphasise using the heart to think and remember. So for this particular culture it appears that emotion is as much of a thinking process as any of the other types, while in another culture it may be completely different.

For me personally, it really depends on what I'm doing. If I were helping out a friend with his/her problems I would definitely incorporate emotion into my thinking process to understand how they feel about the situation in relation to what actually happened, and then apply logical problem solving to it in order to give them the best advice. But if I were carefully weighing out my options in a decision, I would choose to discard emotional considerations in order to choose the most logical, most beneficial choice because I think emotions can cloud logical judgement (not sure if I've just contradicted myself there).

Now applying emotion to something creative. When I write a story, I always use emotion to think about how to write a story. I want the characters to feel real, so emotion is very important to me in portraying characters and how they react to things in the plot.

For me, it's fair to say that emotion as a thinking process differs depending on the situation. For others, it would probably be a little different depending on the person.

Meaningless

For last week's task we had to do a new map for Auckland railway. We could add new stations to it as well as we saw fit.

Below is my map :D

Click on it for a bigger image.

For me I paid special attention to the look of the map. I didn't want it to look like a normal map with ugly rectangles everywhere, which is what a lot of maps look like. I like circles more because they're my favourite shape, especially since I added a loop so that people could go everywhere. I added a loop too so that I could go wherever I wanted and so that my friends right on the other side of Auckland can visit me. I wanted a more futuristic, sleek look as well, which the black and the circle helps bring out with its curves with a moderate use of straight lines. I also made the map square, so that it's more compact and can be easily folded into a small shape to fit into pockets. The black also makes the colours I chose pop out more so that things can be distinguished more easily.





Today the topic was signs and symbols for the lecture. This is my favourite lecture so far. There was one thing that really caught me.

"Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, colours, flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning."--James

This means nothing actually has meaning until we add a meaning to it. That's when it becomes a sign.

I thought of something like this two weeks ago and it was very depressing. At the time I was wondering if anything actually matters or has any significance. I replied to that, thinking that people think that something matters or means anything purely because it is of their opinion that it means something. But deep down, nothing means anything; things just exist. There is no meaning! The illusion of meaning is only the person dressing up the thing with meanings. At the very core of things in all its nakedness, there's no meaning! I was fine with the idea of nothing in the world having any meaning at all, that is until I applied that to myself. That means I have no meaning, my existence is meaningless and matters to no one. No matter what I do it wouldn't mean a single thing to anyone. No matter how hard I work, it won't have a shred of significance. That made me feel horrible and empty.

I feel fine now, but I'm unsure whether my worst possible conclusion is true and that nothing will ever truly have meaning or whether it's NOT true and I'm just a really negative person. Although I completely agree with the quote above taken from the lecture, I don't want to think about it in a personal way because I know that I would feel devastated for quite some time afterwards at the thought that I mean nothing.


Another thing that caught me was languages. I love learning new languages. Right now I'm trying to pick up Hindi. It's a beautiful language and I think it would become a very important language to know soon. It's difficult trying to learn it at the moment, but I'm not going to stop.

The languages discussed in class today in particular were Asian languages. Specifically east Asian languages, since Chinese looks and sounds nothing like Hindi and there are various grammatical differences and differences in syntax. If it was similar I would be less motivated to learn it to be honest.

Anyway, east Asian languages. This includes Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and many others existing. The relationship between these languages is their writing system and the pronunciation to be honest. I can speak Chinese, Cantonese, and Japanese and I know a little bit about Korean. Chinese and Cantonese uses exactly the same writing system and the syntax is exactly the same. The writing system for these two languages came from pictrograms in their earliest form. Until eventually it evolved to its present form.

Japanese also uses Chinese characters, called kanji, mixed in with their hiragana and katakana. Kanji are direct copies of Chinese characters. Occasionally you'd find very subtle differences between Kanji and Chinese characters, but they're usually the same. Hiragana is also derived from Chinese characters. They're actually very simplified forms of Chinese characters made into the Japanese alphabet. Katakana is just like hiragana, but even more simplified and is used specifically for foreign European words not native to Japanese. The pronunciation in Japanese for some words are very similar to that in Chinese and Cantonese. Often meaning the same thing and having the same characters. This is because you have pure Japanese and Sino-Japanese. Pure Japanese is the pronunciation that is simply native Japanese not affected by other cultures. Sino-Japanese on the other hand is pronunciation of certain words which are derived from Chinese and Cantonese pronunciation.

Korean has its own little writing system. Once a long time ago, it was common to see Chinese characters being used in Korean language, but now it's very rare.

I think how symbols, signs, and languages are related between cultures in a particular area is very interesting and I think it gives an insight into how different cultures think and what their beliefs and values are like. It also shows their relationships and to an extent their interactions as well.

For example, go through Hong Kong and you would find fragments of English mashed into Cantonese. This is a lasting influence of English colonial rule.

"Form follows function"

Today the most interesting things were the Moebius strip and the variations of the London Rail map with topological distortions from the geographical map of the railway.

The Moebius stip activity was fun to do. I liked how you get two separate pieces get linked together when you cut some of them in half. It was interesting how it was applied to water wheels.

I like how simple the later versions of the map are. I adore simplicity, so for the task where we're supposed to make a new Auckland Rail map I want to make it as simple as possible with added artistic touches so that it doesn't look boring.

A key thing in the design of the later London Rail maps was "form follows function". This sounds exactly like something someone from the industrial era would say. At that time machines, mass production, functionality and progress were key things people thought about. It reminds me of Bauhaus and their design approach. How in their designs they consider the practical use of it and how many of their designs could be mass produced.

For my map these would be things to think about. It would have to be a very simple map, easy to read. Compact, easy to carry around and easily distinguishable. Should be simple enough to be easy to mass produce as well and be beautiful. For me, it would have to have colour coding. It's known that I'm a huge fan of colour coding everything, and I find it to be the easiest way to spot different things in diagrams which makes them easier to understand.

The phrase "form follows function" to me sounds like artistic qualities and personal touches are discarded and feels cold and distant rather than engaging, personal, and appealing. However, I suppose it depends on the purpose of whatever is being made though. For example, playgrounds are for the purpose of having fun, so of course it would look fun and youthful while technical graphs look very specific and formal. For my map, I don't want artistic appreciation and functionality to be mutually exclusive. So that's another point in the design of my map.

This week I'll have to make a decision on my focusing question of my literature review. I don't like the two questions given to be honest, so I'm going to make my own question. I'm sure we're allowed to do that. At the moment Islamic art looks like the top choice for me to do for the literature review. What I love about it is the intricacy in patterns for Islamic art and how religion is a key theme in Islamic art as well. It gives a glimpse of the beliefs and values in Islamic cultures.