Here is strength in numbers! This 3-foot
diameter sculpture is part of the
Math
Midway exhibit for the
Museum of
Mathematics. There are 60 acrobats (or "strong men") holding
each other up in complex arrangement. It is based on my
People
sculpture, but for the midway theme, we adjusted their outline
to be more acrobatic. The parts are water-jet cut from six colors of
"Sintra" plastic (which is a brand name for PVC made lighter into a
foamboard) with a small metal connector for joining them together. (A
hi-res version of this image is available
here.)
As part of the Math Midway exhibit, we
wanted a reconstructable sculpture which can be repeatedly assembled
and disassembled. The parts easily screw together if you can keep track
of the correct pattern for assembly. We ran a "sculpture barn raising"
event in which lots of people worked with me on the construction. The
matching rule is to connect "back arms" to "back legs" in cycles of
five, alternating over and under to make a kind of star knot. In
the images above, these groups of five are always in a single color.
Then twelve of these groups assemble like a dodecahedron, using
connectors on the front arms and front legs.
We built two copies of
Amazing Acrobats on the day of the
World Science Festival street fair. They have the same geometry but
different coloring patterns. The one at left in this image
follows a simple coloring scheme where groups of five parts are the
same color and twelve of these groups assemble like a dodecahedron. In
the one at right above, we used a random coloring pattern. There
are also some interesting, symmetric, 5-color and 6-color patterns that
can be used for assembling the parts. But we have not yet had a
chance to build them.
The above image shows a nice 6-coloring in which large circles of five
are each a single color. The circles are seen by following only
the front-arm-to-front-leg connections. In some sense, these are
the next larger cycles around the star-shaped cycles that are
single-colorid in the first coloring, shown at the top of the page.
Above is a 1-color, 3-inch diameter,
nylon model.
More strength in numbers! Here's
Amazing Acrobats with Glen
Whitney and Cindy Lawrence, who made the
Math Midway exhibit happen. Many other people were involved as well. I
specified the general form of this sculpture, then the detailed choice
of materials, colors, connector design, and character outline is the
result of collaborating with many folks at Ralph Applebaum Associates
and Showman Fabricators. Thank you all, especially Tim Nissen, Rosanna
Vitiello, Tommy Matthews, and Justin Kurtz.
