Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

2012-04-28

Synesthesia, Savant Syndrome: Jason Padgett, A Real ‘Beautiful Mind'

Brain-damaged college dropout became maths genius after attack | Mail Online

A college dropout has been hailed a unique maths genius - after his brain was damaged in a brutal attack by muggers.

Jason Padgett, 41, was left concussed after he was ambushed outside a karaoke club and repeatedly kicked in the head.

Now, wherever he looks, he sees mathematical formulas and turns them into stunning, intricate diagrams he can draw by hand.

He is the only person in the world known to have the skill and experts say it was caused by his head injury.

Source: Brain-damaged college dropout became maths genius after attack | Mail Online

Real ‘Beautiful Mind’: College Dropout Became Mathematical Genius After Mugging (PHOTOS) - ABC News

“I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere,” he said. “Every single little curve, every single spiral, every tree is part of that equation.”

The diagrams he draws are called fractals and Padgett can draw a visual representation of the formula Pi, that infinite number that begins with 3.14.

Jason Padgett's drawing of Pi.

A scan of Padgett’s brain showed damage that was forcing his brain to overcompensate in certain areas that most people don’t have access to, Brogaard explained. The result was Padgett was now an acquired savant, meaning brilliant in a specific area.

“Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person super human,” Brogaard said.

Source: Real ‘Beautiful Mind’: College Dropout Became Mathematical Genius After Mugging (PHOTOS) - ABC News

Synesthesia, Savant Syndrome, Jason Padgett, Beautiful mind 314, Island of genius - YouTube

This is a hand drawn fractal. Jason Padgett, a mathematician with synesthesia (a condition where the brain interprets numbers as shapes) draws a fractal of space time at the Planck Particle size frame and at a certain frequency. Then wave equations (uncertainty) make the drawing warp and stretch as space time does from the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle.

Source: Synesthesia, Savant Syndrome, Jason Padgett, Beautiful mind 314, Island of genius - YouTube

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2012-02-12

First Neanderthal Cave Paintings Discovered

World's Oldest Work Of Art Found In Spain (VIDEO)

A recently discovered painting in Spanish caves in Costa Del Sol was found by scientists to be approximately 42,000 years old, making it the oldest artwork ever. What is more, this artwork is also the first known painting by Neanderthals, not homo sapiens. Professor Jose Luis Sanchidrian called it an "academic bombshell" and its effects will reverberate through the field of Art History for years to come.

Source: World's Oldest Work Of Art Found In Spain (VIDEO)

First Neanderthal cave paintings discovered in Spain - life - 10 February 2012 - New Scientist

Looking oddly akin to the DNA double helix, the images in fact depict the seals that the locals would have eaten, says José Luis Sanchidrián at the University of Cordoba, Spain. They have "no parallel in Palaeolithic art", he adds. His team say that charcoal remains found beside six of the paintings – preserved in Spain's Nerja caves – have been radiocarbon dated to between 43,500 and 42,300 years old.

That suggests the paintings may be substantially older than the 30,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in south-east France, thought to be the earliest example of Palaeolithic cave art.

Source: First Neanderthal cave paintings discovered in Spain - life - 10 February 2012 - New Scientist

World's Oldest Cave Painting by Neanderthal Artists

Anatomically modern humans — that is, Homo sapiens sapiens, people who, anatomically speaking, were pretty much indistinguishable from the people who populate the world today — evolved as early as 200,000 years ago, but it took time for our ancestors to migrate across the globe, and for tens of thousands of years, while modern humans were spreading throughout Africa, Neanderthals still dominated Europe. Scientists working at Nerja have previously found Neanderthal tools dating to around 40,000 years ago in the caves, but there is no evidence that modern humans inhabited the caves at that time. The area is thought to be one of the last Neanderthal refuges before the Neanderthal extinction at around 30,000 B.C.E.

Source: World's Oldest Cave Painting by Neanderthal Artists | Care2 Causes

We Are All Part Neanderthal - Find Out How Much!

Who Were Neanderthals?
Neanderthals, like modern humans, belong to the group of primates that scientists classify as the genus Homo. They lived in Europe, the Middle East and parts of western Asia from about 500,000 years ago to as recently as 30,000 years ago. Anatomically, Neanderthals were shorter than modern humans, with thicker bones, more steeply-sloped foreheads and heavier brow ridges.
They had bigger brains and muscles, but for some reason Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago, while we modern humans survived. Exactly why we, Homo sapiens, flourished and our Homo neandertalensis cousins died out, is an evolutionary mystery that biologists are trying to unravel. What experts do know is that although Neanderthals disappeared long ago, their DNA lives on in all non-African people.

Not The Dimwitted Caveman Of Popular Culture
And that image from popular culture, of the Neanderthal as a primitive and dimwitted caveman, is probably inaccurate. Scientists believe they may actually have been the most advanced group of primates besides modern humans, and despite their stocky bodies and thick skulls, may have possessed intelligence almost on par with ours.

Source: We Are All Part Neanderthal - Find Out How Much! | Care2 Causes

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2010-10-15

MechaniCards: Mailable Kinetic Sculptures

YouTube - Introducing MechaniCards™

Mailable kinetic sculptures, made by Bradley N. Litwin. They're made primarily of paperboard, with few bits of wood and plastic.

Collected from: YouTube - Introducing MechaniCards™

Mechanicards mailable scultptures by Brad Litwin

MechaniCards™ are miniature, hand-operated, kinetic sculptures, designed and produced in limited edition by Bradley N. Litwin. Each one is hand made, numbered and signed by the artist. They are constructed primarily from paperboard, with a few bits of wood, metal, or plastic. They make excellent gifts, and are suitable for mailing, as truly unique greeting cards. Each piece comes with complete instructions and display recommendations. They are also available as do-it-yourself construction kits.

Collected from: Mechanicards mailable scultptures by Brad Litwin

Bradley N. Litwin is a Philadelphia based, multi-discipline artist, born in 1955. Primarily self-trained, his career as an artist has taken a serpentine path through craft, manufacturing, multimedia production, music, and the fine arts. Through it all, he has been making machinery of one kind or another for over thirty-five years.

Collected from: Brad Litwin - Bio

Sources: YouTube - Introducing MechaniCards™; Brad Litwin - Bio; Mechanicards mailable scultptures by Brad Litwin

Related: Brad Litwin - Kinetic Works; Dude Craft: Bradley N. Litwin's Mechanicards; Make: Online : Brad Litwin's MechaniCards; Mechanicards « Karela Fry; Brad Litwin's MechaniCards

2010-04-04

Microsoft Project Gustav -- The Digital Painting Experience

Clipped from: Microsoft PressPass - Image Gallery:

MSR Gustav Gustav is an eXtreme Computing Group project aimed at producing painting software that is easy to use, leverages the multiple cores of future computers, and provides a natural, immersive user experience.

Clipped from: Project Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting - Microsoft Research

Project Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting

Typically the experience of painting on a computer is nothing like painting in the real world. Real painting is actually a very complex phenomenon – a 3D brush consisting of thousands of individually deforming bristles, interacting with viscous fluid paint and a rough-surfaced canvas to create rich, complex strokes. Until fairly recently, the amount of computing power available on a typical home computer simply hasn't been sufficient to attempt simulating such a real-world painting experience in any detail. Project Gustav aims to leverage the increasing power of the PC and ever faster graphics processors and combine that with a natural user interface, to bring a rich painting experience to a wide audience including hobbyists and professionals alike. The result is a prototype system that contains some of the world’s most advanced algorithms for natural painting.

Clipped from: YouTube - Microsoft Project Gustav

Clipped from: YouTube - Project Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting

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2009-07-05

Robert J. Lang The Art, Science and Engineering of Origani

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Robert J. Lang

Dr. Robert J. Lang 1961 (age 47–48) is an American physicist who is also one of the foremost origami artists and theorists in the world. He is known for his complex and elegant designs, most notably of insects and animals. He has long been a student of the mathematics of origami and of using computers to study the theories behind origami. He has made great advances in making real-world applications of origami to engineering problems.

clipped from www.ted.com

clipped from www.youtube.com

clipped from www.langorigami.com

Like a musical composer, the origami artist works with patterns and relationships within the paper and arranges those patterns into something that touches a human aesthetic. And while complex figures must be designed according to fixed, fundamental principles (design), there is always some spark of sponteneity and serendipity (creation) in the realization.

clipped from www.youtube.com

clipped from www.langorigami.com

The intersections between origami, mathematics, and science occur at many levels and include many fields of the latter. We can group these intersections into roughly three categories:

Origami mathematics, which includes the mathematics
that describes the underlying laws of origami;

Computational origami, which comprises algorithms
and theory devoted to the solution of origami problems by mathematical
means;

Origami technology, which is the application of
origami (and folding in general) to the solution of problems arising
in engineering, industrial design, and technology in general.

clipped from www.ams.org

Sources:

Animal-Like Leg Extensions

Clipped from: Kim Graham Studios

Digigrade Leg Extensions

These are Digigrade leg extensions. They are made of steel and add 14 inches of height to the wearer. But these are not ordinary stilts; they give a person the uncanny and graceful appearance of an animal. It is really cool! The movement of the legs is genuinely graceful and naturalistic. It is a great deal of fun being so much taller.

Clipped from: YouTube - Digilegs Demo

Clipped from: Silk Mermaid

Constructing large sculptures, step by step

Professional sculptor Kim Graham works at many scales. She especially likes creating large-scale (12-15-foot, 4-5m) sculptures. On this website, SilkMermaid.com, Kim describes in exact detail each step in constructing these large projects, from initial maquette (model) to eventual completion.

...

From time to time, Kim has paused work on the large projects to execute other commissions. She chronicles some of these on this blog, such as her recent commission “Satyr Legs.” The Satyr Legs project prompted Kim to design her new digigrade leg extensions, [...]

Clipped from: Digitigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digitigrade

A digitigrade is an animal that stands or walks on its digits, or toes. Digitigrades include walking birds (what many assume to be bird knees are actually ankles), cats, dogs, and most other mammals, but not humans, bears, and a few others (cf. plantigrade, unguligrade). They are generally quicker and move more quietly than other mammals.

While humans usually walk with the soles of their feet on the ground, i.e. plantigrade locomotion, digitigrade animals walk on their distal and intermediate phalanges. Digitigrade locomotion is responsible for the distinctive hooked shape of dog legs.

Sources:

Kim Graham Studios
Kim Graham's Gallery
YouTube - Digilegs Demo
Digitigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silk Mermaid

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2008-04-25

Art Space: Architecture and Landscape

The winners and some of honorable mentions of Art Space, an Architecture and Landscape competition, designed to test the vision of artists form around the globe.

clipped from features.cgsociety.org

he CGSociety and NVIDIA are very proud to present the winners of our newest competition, NVArt: Art Space. In this ground-breaking
competition, artists were invited to gaze into the far reaches of imagination and to bring together their vision of grandeur. They were challenged to create the most awe inspiring architecture and landscape, which they did in awesome measure.