The Sound of an Evolving Floating Sculpture Seibold Benjamin1,*, Farjoun Yossi2,** 1Department of Mathematics, Temple University, 1805 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA-19122 2G. Millán Institute of Fluid Dynamics, Nanoscience and Industrial Mathematics, University Carlos III de Madrid, Av. Universidad 30, 28911, Leganés, Spain * E-mail address: seibold@temple.edu URL: http://www.math.temple.edu/∼seibold
** E-mail address: yfarjoun@ing.uc3m.es
Abstract Commissioned by MIT's in-house artist Jane Philbrick, we evolve an abstract 2D surface (resembling Marta Pan's 1961 “Sculpture Flottante”) under mean curvature, all the while calculating the eigenmodes and eigenvalues of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the resulting shapes. These are then synthesized into a sound-wave embodying the “swan song” of the surfaces as the evolve to points and vanish. The surface is approximated by a triangulation, and we present a robust approach to approximate the normal directions and the mean curvature. The resulting video and sound-track were parts in the Jane Philbrick's exhibition “Everything Trembles” in Lund, Sweden, 2009. Top 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. 53C44, 58C40, 68U05. Top Key words and phrases. sculpture, mean curvature, Laplace-Beltrami, eigenmodes, art, sound. Top |