Berfore I start I just wanted to say thank you for all the well wishes I received these last few weeks. To those who don't know my wife caught Covid-19 and had a very rough time of it due to Asthma. I have not had the headspace nor time to write much but now as my wifes health improves I can slowly but surely restart my blog posts about my sculptures. Let's hope that things will continue to improve and that we can put this difficult time behind us.
Anyway, let's get on with the show.
For the 2012 Dublin sand sculpture exhibition, we decided on 'Bright Sparks' as our theme wanting to celebrate Irish science/ scientists. I chose Rowan Hamilton as I remembered the stories about him from my parents, who lived in the area where he was based a century before. I also thought it would be interesting to find out more about him. By the age of 9 he knew 13 languages and from all accounts was a real smarty pants.
Rowan Hamilton (1805-1864) was an Irish astronomer at Dunsink observatory. He was a professor at Trinity College Dublin and was made Royal Astronomer of Ireland. Having added the terms Scalar and Vector to mathematics he had a problem of how to represent rotation in 3 dimensions. The story goes that as he toiled over this problem in his head he took a walk with his wife along the Royal Canal and it hit him. He had to look in the 4th Dimension to make it work. All excited by his cleverness and with no paper to hand he scratched the above formula i²=j²=k²=ijk=-1 into Broom/ Brougham bridge. It has long since faded. (Yes I looked) but in its place is a plaque telling the tale.
In some ways, I had the same problem as Hamilton (with less of the brains to work it out). How do I represent this in a sculpture? I thought about how I could bring it to another dimension and see if that could help me make sense of it all. I have experimented lots with forced perspective in my work and decided on an idea of mixing many different perspectives like a snapshot of how I saw his mind trying to understand dimensions.
Each of the forms were meant to be like a box with a mini Hamilton inside looked at from all angles. The effect gave a very interesting optical illusion which only worked when looking straight on.
My backside
On the other side of the sculpture, I created a bit more obvious scene of that eureka moment. Hamilton scratches the formula while his wife peers of his shoulder. Behind every great man has to be a great woman. Although it was not my favourite side of the sculpture it has been used on book covers and each year as part of the celebrations of Hamilton's life.
Again I used some forced perspective. This time to deal with the shape of the block I had and show the characters and bridge from an interesting angle.
What Hamilton had discovered became known as Quaternions and is very important in space exploration and 3d computer game mechanics. A few months after I completed the sculpture I was contacted by the Irish Mathematics Society and asked to come to Dunsink Observatory for their yearly celebration of his work and a walk along the canal to Broom Bridge which is a yearly pilgrimage they do. It was so nice to talk about my work with such a different group of people.
Time is said to have only one dimension, and space to have three dimensions. ... The mathematical quaternion partakes of both these elements; in technical language it may be said to be 'time plus space', or 'space plus time': and in this sense it has, or at least involves a reference to, four dimensions. And how the One of Time, of Space the Three, Might in the Chain of Symbols girdled be."—William Rowan Hamilton (quoted in Robert Percival Graves' "Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton" (3 volumes, 1882, 1885, 1889))
Ps
Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.
The American Dream - sand sculpture
Dinosaurs rarrrrr! - sand sculpture
Sandcastles me arse - Sand sculpture
I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite
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honestly I don't read all of your writing, even though I am very interested. but when I heard the news of your wife, I immediately prayed to God to speed up the recovery process. and hopefully we can all quickly get rid of this pandami.
Thank you @dedogobelz and thank you for your prayer. We have been doing a lot of that also. Luckily my wife is feeling better each day but it was a very hard time to get through. Hope you and your family are doing well.
!ENGAGE25
ENGAGEtokens.This is where my quaternion is and aside from knowing it seems to give better rotations with less gimbal lock I still don't know precisely what it does XD
My partner (who is now working from home and sees more of the hive stuff now) was passing by to get his cuppa and noticed the first image and asked if it was sand followed up abruptly by how the hell do you do that with sand XD
I thought you did a decent job showing dimensionality. Did this one mess with your head moreso than usual when you were right up close and personal with it doing the carving? XD
Love how you used the dress to frame that bottom corner of that side of the piece :)
Hi, yes this one was quite confusing to make but I enjoy when I really don't know how to do something and then work my way through it until I get some sort of result.
I still don't understand Quatarnian. My math is only as good as how many fingers I can count. then I'm lost.
I'm glad to hear than your Partner was impressed, This is me of my favourite pieces and I'm happy you noticed the dress on the other side. I was trying to use the golden ratio to bring attention to the writing on the wall.
Thanks as always @ryivhnn. I see you mentioned me in a post a while back. I am sorry that I haven't checked it out yet but I am still trying to get back to normal.
!ENGAGE25
After I did the previous comment I was telling him about all your other sand sculptures and he was freaking out about the ones you'd tunnelled or made cavities in 😆
If it's any consolation I was trying to remember what post I mentioned you in 😅 think it might be the bake notes one as I remember you wanting to know about baking in blender once I figured it out.
It's not important anyway get back to normal first!
ENGAGEtokens.Hey there, haven't been on Hive that much after HF as it's been quite a pain with all the little bugs. Sorry to hear that your wife caught Covid, and I'm so glad she's on the road to recovery. It must have been a tough time for you.
I love this sculpture, and I think it's really creative of you to interpret something so complex into something so visual. Hubby is a bit of a mathematician but he isn't familiar with Hamilton's work but has heard of Scalar and Vector. I'm so please I could tell him something about his area, even though I read it off your post!!!😄
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 10/20) Liquid rewards.
Hi, yes it have been a hard time this last while and having Hive acting buggy I was away from it myself. My wife continues to get better and slowly but surely things are returning to some sort of normal.
Quaternions are still quite confusing to me. I do know that thay are used as some sort of coordinate system when you have no other bearings.
I always thought that science and art were very connected, because we are all just trying to make sense of the world using the tools we have.
Thanks @livinguktaiwan
!ENGAGE25
ENGAGEtokens.I am glad to hear that your wife is alright! My best wishes to your family!
Thank @creativemary. Hope your family is doing well also during this tough year.
!ENGAGE20
Thank you! They are alright!
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