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73 points·selvan··3 comments

I wish the pieces had descriptions explaining the connection between the math and the visual in more detail. Particularly, I was looking at this one: https://imaginary.org/hands-on/the-harmonic-series-2-3d-scul...

As an amateur musician, I find the idea of 3d-printing chords a fascinating concept, but the print here looks like it's formed into a cube shape and it's not at all clear to me how one gets to a cube from what I assume are three sinusoidal waves (one for each note in the triad).

I think what they're doing with those sculptures is that they're taking three sine waves of different frequencies A, B, and C, and that the sculpture is the path that the point (cos(A t), cos(B t), cos(C t)) takes over the combined period of all three frequencies. That's why it's cube-shaped; x, y, and z each vary from -1 to 1 over the respective periods of each component. Like a 3D Lissajous figure; see this (https://gfycat.com/angelicdismalamazonparrot) for a 2D example.

But I also agree that I shouldn't have to be guessing like this, and that it'd be better if they had more explanation.

there is a description booklet on all the associated content (apparently all belongs to the La La Lab exhibition) with more explanations, see http://img.uy/lalalab-booklet (page 53)

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