randform

Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.

From the poster:

In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.

The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.

Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).

But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.

->wikipedia link math and fiber arts

Soheil Nasseri (who was featured a couple of times here on randform) is again becoming an actor. This times he is going to play the role of a pianist of the 19th century (means in particular one hour of Chopin). He will perform together with an orchester and the ballet of John Neumeier, Lady of the Camellias. The show is going to be end of Mai in the Metropolitan Opera House, which fits in about 30000 people!
(small clarification added on May 3: The Metropolitan opera house fits in 3800 people at one performance, since there are 8 performances with Soheil Nasseri this gives altogether about 30000 people who may attend his performances)
Before this big event is taking place he rehearsed his performance here in Berlin in the Salon Christophori – a repairshop for fortepianos and other historical instruments in front of ca. 100 highly critical inhabitants of Berlin (…just to make sure that New York gets the right quality! ) His performance was partially together with Tuyêt Pham (mimicking the orchester).

The performance was no exception since next to the repairshop (where you can by the way adopt the repair of a fortepiano) Salon Christorphori hosts a series of high quality performances of artists who enjoy the possibility to perform in a rather casual context (and with better conditions than in a department store). Unfortunately the future of the Salon is rather unclear since the place is currently refurbished with unclear (and most likely gentrified) future tenant situation.

“Small” cultural occasions like the above described are important for the cultural life of a city. They serve not only for local communication and entertainment but are equally of educational value. Unfortunately as described before music education in Berlin is not as it could be and more unfortunately the situation is worsening. In a protest note well-known musicians protest against the cutbacks of music education in schools .

Soheil Nasseri with Tuyêt Pham saying good bye

That is how it currently looks in front of Salon Christophori

Another musical event I attended last week (just in case you wonder what I am doing):
The fantastic crossover project featuring the flying steps and the well-tempered clavier -> youtube video

foto by fotonotof

Short notice: as published in one of the current gazettes (2010-04-20) of the US Trade mark office the company Disney had filed an application for the name “snow white” (if I understood correctly ?) for:

Production, presentation, distribution, and rental of motion picture films; production, presentation, distribution, and rental of television and radio programs; production, presentation, and rental of sound and visual recordings; production of entertainment shows and interactive programs for distribution via audio and visual media, and electronic means; production and provision of entertainment in the nature of shows, current events news, and entertainment information via communication and computer networks; amusement park and theme park services; educational and entertainment services rendered in or relating to theme parks, namely, live stage shows, live amusement park shows, live performances by costumed characters, and presentation of live theatrical performances; presentation of live stage shows; presentation of live show performances; entertainment in the nature of theater productions; entertainer services, namely, live appearances by a professional entertainer

On our flight back from Japan I had the opportunity to watch something that was probably originally a TV program. I do not speak japanese, nevertheless I think one can grasp a bit that the program was a kind of edutainment program promoting mathematics. One sees that the participants of the program have to solve some basic arithmetic problems in a kind of game. I am not sure wether the geometric patterns in the background indicate that maybe even higher mathematics was involved.
Also if the playful enthusiasm of the participants in the images may look a bit foreign to matter-of-fact europeans I found it interesting to see how some countries communicate mathematics in the public.

supplement on may 7th: I was asked wether I could give more details on the program I am promoting here. Unfortunately I couldnt find any details in the airlines (LH) newsmagazine about it, may be some japanese fluent person can say something?

A reader called Silvia Hossfehler asked about a statement I made in a blog post, in which I described a design of a chair that I had subbmitted to a competition. My statement there was “I do not like competitions.” And Silvia Hossfehlers question was:

Are you sure that you do not like competitions? So why did you then send in your suggestion?

Since I think this is a more general issue, I decided to make a blog post out of this.

There are three major aspects of a competition. One is filtering, one is evaluation and one is motivation. A competition is filtering since it is making a choice between the objects/subjects under competition. A competition is evaluating since this choice is usually done with respect to some “value scale” that is for example in the olympic games the value could be e.g. “high velocity” and the filtering is thus to filter out the fastest. However in an art competition for example the “value scale” is not so obvious, people may talk about “quality”, as a possible value, but usually in an art competition, the filtering is mostly subject to a quite unspecifyable/predictable “value scale”. The third aspect is that a competition may serve as fostering motivation, it may make people increase their commitment to a certain task. That is for example the runner in the olympic games may be running faster and giving his/her best due to the “competition”.

Likewise in the working world a competition may filter out “the most efficient/capable”, moreover usually competition is regarded as a necessary condition for motivating people to work hard enough. Efficiency and a motivated workforce is usually essential to make profits and since competition solves all these demands all at once it therefore is a kind of “must-have” for “capitalists”. Often enough the principles of evolution (”survival of the fittest”) are taken as a justification of these paradigmas. However it should be noted that there there are enough examples, which display that in evolution things are more complicated, in particular the “survival of the fittest” may not hold for the individual but for a group of species.

Nevertheless as a result our western society is highly “competition-oriented”.

In my point of view – especially by looking at the odd sides of competition, like for example where it is leading to things as exploitation or monoculture – this can be very problematic and I think a more critical view on competition as such may be at place.

It is of course more or less unavoidable to take part in competitions and unfortunately one has to go through quite some competitions in order to have a saying. Grades in school already constitute a “competition”. And again in this example a competition serves as an agent for “evaluation”.

On the other hand this example already makes it also clear that the above mentioned major aspects of a competition can at least partially be transferred to other means. That is an evaluation can also be done by purely measuring capabilities/competences, i.e. the competitive aspect of being compared to others can be reduced. Likewise motivation can be driven by interest, social connectivity etc. In short competition may not even be a necessary condition for efficiency. On the contrary if the competition and “optimization of efficiency” is too strong competition can be counterproductive (see e.g. the last Toyota crisis). Last but not least the “filtering” aspect of competitions may lead to a blindness for other “filtering” criteria. Thus if for example “fast profit” dominates the “value scale” for a competition other possible criteria, like social conditions etc. are going to be neglected. Moreover the conditions for filtering may be unfair/too restricted etc. (read also this randform post about competition in the academic world).

So yes my comment in the blog post was referring to all that but it was also expressing a subjective discomfort with competition, in particular for me competition is usually not the most motivating force. For example in school sports I was especially slow if I had to run with others. I do not object to evaluation, on the contrary a regular feedback is important for me, however I do not always need the comparision to others. The comparision to others may impose quite an extra stress, rather than motivation. This can go as far as this: If I notice that someone wants to challenge me for a competition I sometimes prefer to completely step back. In particular there are people who want to make everything into a competition. I find that unpleasant, since in these cases one has not only to decide about the issue in question, but also about the aspect, wether one is up for a competition.

I took part in this design competition mentioned in the blog post, because I actually would have liked to discuss my chair with others and get critics about the design etc. and eventually connect to people who might be interested in building a prototype (if you put your design just into a forum or on your blog than the response is usually not very big). So unfortunately in this competition nothing like that happened. Thats in part what I do not like about these usual competitions. Moreover there are more and more competitions, where you have to pay an entrance fee (apart from postage etc.) in order to present your work. I think this is crazy. Who is taking part in these competitions?

I couldnt resist buying the above fashion item from a bargain-bin in Fukuoka, since it is on one hand a refreshing example of language use, but secondly because it displays an interesting connection between garment and power (here in a highly agressive way though). The T-shirt had been made by a factory called Slap Stick.

It has been icy and cold the last days in Berlin with a lot of snow (see above image from today). In an earlier randform post I indicated that there is quite a lot to tell about badly built US houses. Like, when living in New England, it happened one cold day that the dishwasher didnt work. It took us quite a while to find the reason. The reason was that a pipe, which was INSIDE the house, however too close to the outer wall, froze. Yes you understood correctly – the insulation of the house was so sparsely that this pipe froze inside the house!

But back to the image – if you ever wondered what these strange signs on lamp posts and trees in Germany may mean (like the blue sign in the image above which you see if you follow the arrow). These signs are giving a detailled description of hydrants and facilities for water, natural gas, district heat and electricity use. So the above sign in the image should indicate a water gate (SCHIEBER in german). This sign methodology makes it considerably easy to detect frozen and/or broken pipes in the soil. Hopefully there will be a change in the US regarding the saving of energy, otherwise one should may be think about developping a sign methodology for frozen pipes inside US houses…

ranform wishes all its clients a happy new year and not a happy new ear !

Again on new years eve we will try to avoid the inner districts of Berlin since the roads in Berlin usually feel almost like being in a war at that evening.

Below are some images from the Nishinihon firework show in Ohori Park, Fukuoka from over a year ago. Here firework specialists are creating an amazing firework with high precision. The specialists are even able to rather scientifically predict the height and time of detonation in such a way that they are able to create little images like a smilie or a heart (please see below). Where it should be said that a heart which is poetically dropping down from the skies is of course hilarously kitchy.

Remark: The images were made with a small canon without a tripod.

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In the image above it looks as if a boat ferries across to Isola di San Michele. However what you see there it is just Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore. Nevertheless in Venice you may still feel as if Tadzio from the famous film may lurk around the corner any next moment.

Below I make a little advertisement for Piazza San Marco and in particular St. Mark’s Basilica since there are yet not enough tourists there…;)

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