Binomial / work in progress
I’ve been working on a new geometry, and therefore to some extent a new series of images. I’m working with the title Binomial, not sure if that’s where I’m going to stick, probably not I suspect, but we’ll see.
In this first phase it’s been an engaging look at how best to pack a set of spheres into a toroid, a mathematical puzzle that you might think would have been broadly resolved by now, but in fact I haven’t been able to find very much about the geometry and its potential online at all.
There’s an interesting payoff between the number of spheres you want to use, the way they sit together, and the patterns they create in the larger whole, in some ways rather similar to the way seeds are packed into a seedhead in nature.
Alongside the packing I’m looking at a series of rotations that allow me to spin the individual components inside the space, this isn’t massively evident yet, but it’s a second set of numbers that create a kind of oppositional rhythm, mapped within the phases of the initial set of moves.
I’ve read that pure maths, to some extent, is simply the study of energy, pattern and movement, a kind of numerical abstraction, that drives form and nature. It’s an area that continues to fascinate me.
It’s worth noting that I’m using a kind of digital Post It note system here, not to colour the geometry, but to categorise the potential for colour distribution across the picture plane.
It’s a visual shorthand for understanding how the colours will shift, ahead of applying a real palette of hues, which inevitably then influence how you feel about the work. The key at this stage is to stay in neutral whilst the composition is being analysed.
