Jacques Beck

Artist

Waterloo-Belgium

A stone sculptor for more than twenty years after a long intro via wood cutting, I entered Bridges math-art last year introducing my concept of multisculpture, which shows common ground with Nat Friedman's hyperseeing. Emphasizing geometry and rational mechanics content, I could present and manipulate in the Art Exhibition a typical multisculpture shown in the catalogue as a matrix image (4 view directions for its 5 positions). This year, with another multisculpture and two classic sculptures, I illustrate my talk on the phenomenological aspects of traditional manual stone carving using its basic tools, point chisel and mallet. This personal account of its inherent complexity defines some of the minimal basics required for complete mathematical modelling that could one day bridge to fully automated end-to-end stone carving capabilities including the subjectivity of the artistic aspect, up to an eventual result indistinguishable from man-made art.

Les Autres et Moi or Les Autres Emois (The Others and Me or The Alternate Emotions)

200 X 170 X 130 mm

white Carrara marble

2000

This work belongs to the small series of multisculptures that were included in the Bridges Pécs 2010 paper. I like to present it here, because its genesis appears in the YouTube movie referenced in the Coimbra 2011 paper, and its shape has been recently reproduced in bronze, a piece that will also be shown in company of the original in the exhibit, yet off-catalogue. There are six positions, each one viewable from around as usual. Its shape reveals several circular lines and conical surfaces, spirals and helicoids, radii materialized by chisel strokes symbolizing perhaps 'the others around me', leaving a pathway to freedom. This metaphor can of course be changed with the positions, potentially creating other emotions. The point chisel strokes in the central cone have been modified in the bronze copy, and became more regular dips.

La Clé de Voûte (Keystone)

355 X 170 X 110 mm

white Carrara marble

2000

Anthropomorphic sculpture shown here mainly in relationship to the paper as it has been carved only with the point chisel. Symbolically, it could represent the humble stone cutter shaped very synthetically yet with a rough coat and who is completing his magnificent arch work with the essential shiny pinnacle piece, that he brings to the building yard. Or, could this be the mathematical abstraction that buttresses a whole mathematical theory ?

Ode à la Paix (Ode to Peace)

290 X 220 X 200 mm

Belgian blue stone ('petit granit')

2000

Work heavily carved towards lightness and presenting again very smoothed surfaces versus rough point chisel work, the substance of the presentation. It could symbolically represent a monumental fake dead-end open to the sky, so inviting to fly away with the Peace Dove. Or mimicking in a mathematical setting the very instant when the solution suddenly appears and gives soaring rise to instant peace to the mind.

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