pythagorean tree

when i asked my friend charley, the engineer, to comment on the dropper's* "Pythagorean Tree" piece below he recalled how the disco ball's pattern reflects the infinite systems of our universe: "how long is the coastline of tahiti? it has a definite length, but if you break it down into smaller and smaller curves the coastline goes on forever."

*in the early 1960s, an artistic movement called "drop art" emerged after artists clark richert and gene bernofsky dropped painted rocks onto the street from their dorm window. richert and bernofsky were intrigued by the "happenings" their art spawned. as their artistic ideologies propagated, the "droppers" purchased six acres of artistic space/pasture in southwest colorado. inspired by the work of buckminster fuller, the droppers erected geodesic domes throughout the artistic commune (pictured above). the domes, mostly constructed from metal scraps, served as centers for the droppers to live, work, sleep and (plausibly) drop acid inside.

Posted by Madame Lamb on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 9:10 PM