Following yesterday’s experiments with the Random Pi Walk (hat tip Alex Bellos), I’ve upped the ante.  The above image is the decimal expansion of the square root of two, following the first one million digits.  The data is thanks to Stan Kerr via Project Gutenberg.  Each decimal digit 0-9 results in a change of direction of 36 degrees and, in this case, travels 3 pixels in that direction.

The resulting image is MUCH larger than the previous visualizations – click here for the full resolution version.

An interesting article on finding algorithms for self-assembling, nano-scale polyhedra.  Related to some things I’m thinking about in the studio at the moment, the process seems quite interesting/complicated.  Researchers “determined the best 2-D arrangements, called planar nets, to create self-folding polyhedra with dimensions of a few hundred microns, the size of a small dust particle. The strength of the analysis lies in the combination of theory and experiment… There have been some successes with simple 3-D shapes such as cubes, but the list of possible starting points that could yield the ideal self-assembly for more complex geometric configurations gets long fast. For example, while there are 11 2-D arrangements for a cube, there are 43,380 for a dodecahedron (12 equal pentagonal faces). Creating a truncated octahedron (14 total faces — six squares and eight hexagons) has 2.3 million possibilities.”

Also of interest is the ideation process for this work, where “…the students got acquainted with their assignment by playing with a set of children’s toys in various geometric shapes. They progressed quickly into more serious analysis”.

Via: Science Daily (via: Philip Torrone on Make Blog)

His journeyman, the monk-mason Garin de Troyes, speaks of an operative logic of movement enabling the “initiate” to draw, then hew the volumes “in penetration space,” to make it so that “the cutting line propels the equation”.  One does not represent, one engenders and traverses.  This science is characterized less by the absence of equations rather than the very different role they play: instead of being good forms absolutely that organize matter, they are “generated” as “forces of thrust” by the material, in a qualitative calculus of the optimum.

From page 402 of Reiser + Unemoto’s Atlas of Novel Techtonics

While looking for another book at the Architecture Library, I found this beautiful book of plates form 1847.  I took some photographs, but found that a. my cell phone didn’t do a great job, and b. the New York Public Library did it much better than I ever could.

The book is Traite Theorique Et Pratique De L’Art De Beatir by Jean Rondelet.  The book is about 12 x 24″ and absolutely beautiful.

More moire patterns, generated in Processing, this time with two interactive grids rotated by the x/y coordinates of the mouse and variable grid size.

Found at the EcoStores Nebraska.

Former nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan; such strange and seemingly intentional geometry.

Via: Der Spiegel

Shape/chord relationships for a hexagonal keyboard.

Via: C-Thru Music

“Vergence” by Tina Frank

An “oloid” via Wundersames Sammelsurium