CONTEMPORARY ART meets GEOMETRIC METER
meets DIGITAL DESIGN

yes i am a fan of ‘Square Pusher’ tech maestro, but no this piece has nothing to do with his music. it just seemed like an apt name.

If it doesn’t make you go blind this makes an interesting repeating background tile. I’m not actually setting out to make optical art, I’m more interested in this instance with the underlying family of ellipses. The tones I have used here come from a method I am developing to visually represent values in simple arithmetic patterns I am exploring. The result of this geekiness is quite fun. Or does it only feel fun for the geek?

Here is the URL to a slightly smaller version of this tile:-

http://www.root2art.co.uk/backgrounds/img/root2art_optical_maths_pattern.png

Feel free to use it for your blog or MySpace profile background, if this is your thing!

Detail from forthcoming animation

In this art i found some mathematics:-

I’m reminded here of the first line of the first poem I every wrote about my art work: ‘art derived from geometry: geometry derived from art’

Whilst I’ve created no great work of art or mathematics here I’m quite excited by this ‘thing’.

As bizarre as it may seem to us today: – until Pythagoras discovered the connection between musical harmonics and mathematics it was universally believed that there was no connection between the science of nature and numbers. Mathematics in ancient Greek times was a purely philosophical discipline. In fact it was also Pythagoras who was also believed to have invented the term philosophy. Mathematics today seems to creep into just about all subjects including art.

This last month I’ve been working mostly on a pure mathematics project. Hence not much activity here on my art blog. For centuries mathematicians have been obsessed with trying to find a pattern to the sequence of prime numbers in the number line. For what its worth here is my own completely intuitive feeling about the primes based on my own work in this area. Within the apparent randomness of the placement of the primes is a property like that of mind. As mind gives rise to an external world, and the external world gives rise to mind: so to can certain mathematical patterns be reflected in the sequence of primes, and simultaneously the primes can give rise to patterns in other mathematical entities.

This is a tough one to articulate! Trying again:- The primes have an ability to reflect and reveal certain seemingly unrelated patterns in mathematics, yet the primes by nature have no logical sequence that can be described in isolation from other mathematical ‘environments’.
I’m somehow invoked by the study of the primes into thinking about the nature of memory, mind and the memory properties of water. Not that I know much about these things. As I said, this is just an intuitive ‘feeling’ and I have no logical reasoning to support my dumb artist’s hypothesis.

If nothing comes out of my current project in the way of real maths, then I’m hoping I can at least get some good visuals.

I’m becoming more convinced that, within the geometry/art canon I have begun with Root2Art, I can find the next generation of artistic form and content, from dipping further into pure mathematics. Analysis to be more precise. The image above reveals nothing about any original idea in mathematics, or indeed unoriginal idea. I’m gambling, however that if I genuinely commit to learning the tools, theorems and history of a particular area of mathematical investigation I’ve been interested in for many years, that I can come up with some fruit. The nature of this fruit might be original art, or maybe even an original idea in mathematics, but maybe it could be something worthy of the name ‘Hypothesis Art’.

Is it possible to create a purely visual statement about a purely mathematical idea, or is this really stretching language too thinly? A visual statement one with real meaning that is, not just some crap conceptual piece that is supposedly about something no one would ever guess at unless told. But something that has a real intelligent and efficient communicative purpose about it, that could explain in a elegant and efficient way an abstract hypothesis about a function for instance. I’m a firm believer that new artistic language grows out of attempts to solve real visual communication problems. My artistic career so far seems to be one long search for more challenging visual problems to work on. I may not solve them, but the act of trying always brings about new and unexpected visual fruit.

this is just a bit odd. i was making some new backgrounds and ended up with this.