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These Morphing Sculptures Make Math Beautiful

Even if you cringe thinking about math and science, there’s no denying that John Edmark’s mathematically-inspired art is amazing and totally mesmerizing.

The secret to Edmark’s art is precision. Currently a Visiting and Adjunct Faculty member in the Art and Art History Department at Stanford University, he holds two very different master’s degrees, one in Design from Stanford and another in Computer Science from Columbia University. But it’s the combination of precision and design that make his pieces so stunning.

The bulk of Edmark’s work focuses on the naturally occurring patterns that underlie space and growth. That inspiration led him to create “kinetic sculptures” and transformable objects. Some objects transform, others are “animated” through high speed photography under a strobe light, making the mathematically crafted static pieces undulate as though alive. In either case, the work showcases what hidden structures lie within apparently amorphous spaces.

It’s particularly interesting that the most fantastical aspects of Edmark’s art is the reality. As he says, his work “is an invitation to plunge deeper into our own world and discover just how astonishing it can be.”

It’s the unexpected that makes the pieces so fascinating, and the precision that makes them possible. The only way Edmark could get such movements that seamlessly transform before a viewer’s eyes is if they were extremely precise. That clearly brings out and amplifies what Edmark calls the relationship between facts and perception.

He sums up his inspiration beautifully in one sentence: “If change is the only constant in nature, it is written in the language of geometry.”

Check out more of his art projects on his Vimeo page.

IMAGES: John Edmark

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Comments

  1. Chris says:

    Why didn’t you mention this is because of a Fibonacci sequence?