Jean Constant
I have an on-going interest in exploring the connection between Mathematics and the natural world. Both are inspiring in many ways and often bring unexpected, surprising, always rewarding associations.
Most everyone knows Spikey. As Stefen Wolfram told us it
originated in a rhombic hexecontahedron (now five intersecting
tetrahedra). Years later he found out that the flower of a cactus
named Mandacaru (The Happiness star) also has a 60 faces rhombic
hexecontahedron shape.
This image is part of a 52 illustrations project on the Geometry
of Flowers soon to be published. I laid a real Mandacaru flower on
a modified blueprint of a rhombic hexecontahedron.
I am indebted to Cicerolajes for providing me with several
real-time pictures of a Mandakaru, Robert Webb for his outline of
a rhombic polyhedron, and of course, Stephen Wolfram, for
inspiring this work and highlighting the close visual connection
between Mathematics, Nature, and art.
This is an unusual iteration of a Klein bottle, a 4-dimensional knot existing only in the imagination of mathematicians, The closed non-orientable surface with no inside or outside was discovered accidentally by mathematician Felix Klein two centuries ago. It strangely relates to traditional Indonesian rattan headdresses found in Papua New Guinea. Mathematics is rooted in an on-going discovery of a natural order that humans have translated instinctively since the dawn of humanity as well-known ethno-mathematician Paul Gerdes used to tell us.