1d to 3d

Display at Bridges Eindhoven...

 

included this 1d to 3d dodecahedron

My setup on the opposite side of the hall.

Some art inspiration from England......

and from home. I took this photo to finish an article I have written.

Septagonal face in 3d printed jig.

Hexagonal and Pentagonal faces

Everything including a pentagonal face construction from spokes.

The flower shaped jig was a first off attempt, Bit of a problem there, the floback clip would need to be removed through the wooden assembly.

New materials

Soaking sticks for the 7 sided figure. Soaking makes them more pliable and so they can bend more without snapping.

Hi

Recently I attended the Bridges Maths and Arts conference in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It was great and I will report further in other posts. But for now I'm reporting on some Bridges inspired stuff.

Next to the main Bridges conference hall was an informal poster area where I set up camp at a table to show and discuss some of my 3d printed things.  I was intrigued by some of the displays including one of (basically) one dimensional wooden blocks transformed into a dodecahedron. Unfortunately I didn't get the contact details of the gentleman who had made them. The work was made simpler by connecting the pentagonal faces at the midpoint of sides instead of at the dodecahedron vertices. Also a young relative in England made some intriguing related artwork!

On getting home to Melbourne, I started working on similar 1d to 3d constructions and plan to ferret around in the maths of the things soon. To make the 7 pointed star shown above, I needed to cut the craft sticks I had in 2 parts lengthways, soak the sticks, and also assemble them on a 3d printed jig.

Since then I have sourced some better craft sticks. On a trip to Northcote Plaza for a haircut, shopping, lunch and banking I also bought (hooray) some coffee stirrers which to me are just longer skinnier craft sticks. Their full name is "Premium Quality Eco Wooden Catering Coffee Stirrers" (!) Anyway with these it should be simple to make more models and more elaborate models. Hopefully by next week I can report on some 3d constructions,

Regards Steve Nurse  

Review: Fear of Mathematics

1. Maths is not arithmetic however fluency with arithmetic can help maths. Maths learning starts when maths related concepts are observed and discussed in everyday life.

 

 

2. Maths is a processing art in the same way that cooking is. Skill and knowledge are needed to distill ingredients into delicious meals and there is a parallel in processing situations using mathematical understanding.

3. Some art forms cut to the chase and are the condensed version of others. This is true of prose and poetry, of descriptions and mathematical descriptions, and why I have attempted to use diagrams to explain Auerbach's work

This is an illustrated review of “The fear of mathematics and how to overcome it” by Felix Auerbach. Although the book was written in 1924, it was only translated into English a century later, in 2024. Its original German title is Die Furcht vor der Mathematik und ihre Uberwundung. At 104 pages it is fairly short, and few of the pages are taken up with translator’s notes and a short biography of Auerbach.

Nevertheless, the book resonated with me as a part-time educator, engineer and amateur mathematician. It could equally well have been titled “What mathematics is – and what it is not”. To get the message, the book needs to be read carefully, and although this book asserts that mathematics is poetical, taken as a whole it is hard to digest. For example, these sentences are related to the differences between arithmetic and mathematics:

“But when one then says, as happens repeatedly, that the pursuit of mathematics mechanizes one's spirit takes away one's freedom and forces us into pre-determined schemata, that is another egregious misunderstanding. It's the result of another piece of legerdemain.” and are wordy and not very poetical!

 Because I was keen to understand, and sympathetic to the arguments, I found myself visualising the words as diagrams and pictures. Some of these I jotted down on paper, they may help with an understanding or discussion of the book. Overall I thought the book worthwhile and full of concepts every maths educator, engineer, scientist and designer should be familiar with.

Ordering is through the website for the book, https://www.thefearofmathematics.com/

4. At the heart of every subject is a mathematical core or skeleton. An understanding the maths of a subject is vital and such a part of our world that everyone should be capable of it.

5. This can be expressed in another way: the blue figure has overcome fear of mathematics and is better able to see the true nature of arts and sciences. This is expressed more poetically by Auerbach, "Whoever knows how to read the language of mathematics is like the legendary Young Siegfried; they can commune with all the birds of the forest and the fields, and discover the secrets of nature, which remain forever unrevealed to people who are under the spell of lexical language."

A work involving artistic technique and maths can involve two methods, the artist can consult with a mathematician or the artist can acquire the mathematical knowledge. Auerbach prefers the second of these methods which leads to and expansion of the artists practice through knowledge.