BS: Wifeies interp. of pic

Subject: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:04 PM

As usual she says "I don't get it".

titled: Escher Bach and Google

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/escherfl.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: gnu
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:29 PM

You're going to have to explain it to me as well. As a student of M.C.'s work, I fail to see what you do (have done). Not new... I am quite dense by times, especially after Miller time, which has been quite "dense" for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:36 PM

I see the references to Escher. I know about the book that tied Escher and Bach, and there's the "boats". But where does Google come in?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 04:39 PM

Oh, and I see another Bach reference. I suppose the water might be a brook. Bach = brook

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 08:33 PM

With some Escher images there is nothing to get. The doodle casts a mood to be enjoyed or not.

I used many Escher variations on instruments such as...

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/Museumviolin.html

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Bert
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 08:51 PM

Escher used competant draftsmanship to disguise a lack of artistic ability.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Feb 05 - 09:51 PM

Escher freely admitted to (and often bemoaned) his inability to "draw". But is that the only measure of "artistic ability"?

I know plenty of people who make their livings as artists who can't draw or paint worth a damn. I'm one of 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 01:08 AM

The book title obliquely referred to was "Gödel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter....a book which almost NO one gets. I'm not sure how the image ties in, but it's fun to muddle in, like the book.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Teresa
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 01:19 AM

Is it an analogy of Bach's themes to Escher's? "to imagine Escher's work, think of the multiple themes of Bach" etc.? Or did escher have a fascination with Bach? Now I'm curious.

Teresa

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Bert
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 01:21 AM

Mmmm, that's not what I said. He could draw very well, but to me he didn't seem to have that artistic flair. It was brilliant how he created a career from schoolboy optical illusions.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: gnu
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:14 PM

Maybe it's the engineer in me but I can spend an evening with Escher's works. Although I find some of it almost macabre and, at times, repetitious.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:19 PM

In about 3 hours on a computer I can do a tesselation that would have taken him weeks.

I did this one before noon.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/escherwallpaper1.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 12:23 PM

I think your wife gives you too much credit....

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: mack/misophist
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 01:33 PM

The Escher part is very nice, if perhaps a little too straightforeward. The Bach image doesn't really seem to fit in. The google is a joke, I assume?

Bery: Escher did rather more than optical illusions. Here are some.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 02:56 PM

It's not big enough for me to see it. Sorry

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 02:58 PM

Never mind, I figured it out. Doh

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 03:00 PM

But the only thing I get is the Escher.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Helen
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 03:44 PM

I have had a copy of this book for 25 years and every few years I pick it up and think I'll try to read it but it is a bit daunting. The reason I have the book is because a woman who was about 70, a customer in the library where I worked, used to come in and enthuse about her latest discoveries on life, the universe and everything. (She had been very busy all her life looking after other people's needs and finally she was free to pursue her own interests. I love that woman!! She and I had so many wonderful conversations. She told me about the Brocken Bow and I finally found a photo of it for her - well a Chinese one, anyway.) So I bought the book but never did get very far into it.

Here is an editorial review of it at Amazon which sums it up beautifully. The main point of reference between Gödel, Escher & Bach is mathematics. Escher's drawings were often mathematically calculated (which is why it doesn't really matter so much about discussing his drawing ability), Bach's music (or any music) has a mathematical underpinning even if he did not see it that way, and Gödel was a mathematician.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Amazon.com

Twenty years after it topped the bestseller charts, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is still something of a marvel. Besides being a profound and entertaining meditation on human thought and creativity, this book looks at the surprising points of contact between the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Gödel. It also looks at the prospects for computers and artificial intelligence (AI) for mimicking human thought. For the general reader and the computer techie alike, this book still sets a standard for thinking about the future of computers and their relation to the way we think.

Hofstadter's great achievement in Gödel, Escher, Bach was making abstruse mathematical topics (like undecidability, recursion, and 'strange loops') accessible and remarkably entertaining. Borrowing a page from Lewis Carroll (who might well have been a fan of this book), each chapter presents dialogue between the Tortoise and Achilles, as well as other characters who dramatize concepts discussed later in more detail. Allusions to Bach's music (centering on his Musical Offering) and Escher's continually paradoxical artwork are plentiful here. This more approachable material lets the author delve into serious number theory (concentrating on the ramifications of Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness) while stopping along the way to ponder the work of a host of other mathematicians, artists, and thinkers.

The world has moved on since 1979, of course. The book predicted that computers probably won't ever beat humans in chess, though Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1997. And the vinyl record, which serves for some of Hofstadter's best analogies, is now left to collectors. Sections on recursion and the graphs of certain functions from physics look tantalizing, like the fractals of recent chaos theory. And AI has moved on, of course, with mixed results. Yet Gödel, Escher, Bach remains a remarkable achievement. Its intellectual range and ability to let us visualize difficult mathematical concepts help make it one of this century's best for anyone who's interested in computers and their potential for real intelligence. --Richard Dragan

Topics Covered: J.S. Bach, M.C. Escher, Kurt Gödel: biographical information and work, artificial intelligence (AI) history and theories, strange loops and tangled hierarchies, formal and informal systems, number theory, form in mathematics, figure and ground, consistency, completeness, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, recursive structures, theories of meaning, propositional calculus, typographical number theory, Zen and mathematics, levels of description and computers; theory of mind: neurons, minds and thoughts; undecidability; self-reference and self-representation; Turing test for machine intelligence.

Product Description:
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this book applies Godel's seminal contribution to modern mathematics to the study of the human mind and the development of artificial intelligence.

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Teresa
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 04:06 PM

Thank you, Helen. That one goes on my reading list. :)

Teresa

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 04:14 PM

Is it really twenty years ago that came out? I've got to read it again!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Wifeies interp. of pic
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Feb 05 - 09:22 PM

Thanks Helen, Also thanks to others who taught me some new things about Escher. He also played the cello.

Using the tesselation picture from this morning I made these today...

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/epyramid.jpg


http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/epyramid91.jpg


Godel Escher and Bach are cool. "Twenty years later" I can do Escheresque pictures in a flash with the aid of a computer.

PS

When I improvise while trying to learn keyboard I find that when I start with a Bach tune it can easily turn into any number of pop tunes. Amusingly I think there must be a Bach code that portends every musical development for the next millenia :)