Solid and Ethereal. Reality and Imagination.

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Leaning on each other. Cutting through each other.

Two towers are floating through empty space.

Infinitely elongated bells.

Delicate metal tubes.

Tubular Bells.

Forming rings.

Ethereal, yet solid.

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I am crafting virtual sculptures: with code,
I draw structures based on mathematical functions.
I got to know these functions when I was learning physics.

First, I built sculptures from plain lines,
then I envisaged them as made from wire loops or metallic pipes.
Finally, I am depicting them as such!

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Using my space probe,
I am viewing the floating towers from different perspectives.
Zooming in and out. Orbiting until I become dizzy.

Marveling at the unwordly allure of stacked rings
Detecting twists and turns, spotting the uncanny in the mundane.

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It was a surprise, that these are perfect circles.
I could have seen it, mathematically speaking,
but I took a different road of discovery.

I saw the bell-shaped towers, and I marked contour lines.
The lines morphed into solid tubes in my imagination.

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Sir Roger Penrose had sparked my urge to create:
I visualized a peculiar mathematical function
he described in his physics book The Road to Reality.
I was in awe of his hand-crafted sketches.

Come for the science, stay for the art!

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Reality and Imagination uses a simpler function, a well-behaved one:
real and imaginary part of complex function 1/z.

Finding elements of surprise  mirrors
my joyous reviving and relearning classical physics over and over.
The allegedly elementary sparkles and glitters,
if viewed from the right vantage point.

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I have been trying  to convey the fascination of physics,
using equations, diagrams, and scientific figures,
… and I tech-blogged myself into a corner.

I longed for  the enigmatic, and art came to the rescue.

Once asked about my goals in life, this bubbled up from subconsciousness:
To become renaissance person, with a modern twist –
adding computer science to physics, mathematics, and philosophy.

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One layer of consciousness below, there was art,
waiting to be summoned!

I picked up a pencil, drawing for the first time in decades.
Something fell into place.

Then I remembered my descriptive geometry classes:
distinct from  fine art, distinct from math,
a school of thought in its own right.

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No matter if I draw with a graphite pencil, a digital stylus, or with code:
I am reviving the ancient tradition
of bringing three-dimensional structures to live,
painstakingly and slowly.

In an era of abundant options for creating digitally,
I choose scarcity.

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I am creating Mathematical Physics Art
the way I have been creating Found Poetry for a long time:
Put in place guardrails, to let creativity flow between them.

Only pick functions that have a bearing on physics.
Use a few colors only.
Use the most basic of software libraries.
Make up silly rules on the stop and stick to them.

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… And know when to break the rules,  gleefully.

The vision of metal tubes become too strong,
so I allowed the lines to grow in thickness.

Metal tubes encapsulate the beauty
of antique scientific instruments,
with parts from brass.

Gold is the color of reality.

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Blue is the color of imagination.
The color of scientific instruments from science fiction,
not from a bygone era.

Above all, Yellow and Blue are the national colors of Ukraine.
I spent February 24, 2022 creating an early version of Reality and Imagination,
then called True Colors.

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The day before, I had completed a drawing of my black antique rotary dial phone,
from an inverted photo of the phone.

Inverting the scanned drawing, the phone became black again.
I added dark Found Poetry.

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Exploring the meaning of the darkness in my images,
I blamed hacker culture and its fondness of neon green letters on back screens.

Or it were the ethereal images of The Cosmos
as brought to my teenage self by Carl Sagan.
A universe resounding with Vangelis’ ethereal music!

Bring it to life with  solid engineering – software or other!

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