2025 Joint Mathematics Meetings
david van brink
Artists
david van brink
Artist
Independent
Santa Cruz, California, USA
Statement
In the first or second grade, we did an activity of "how to write a letter". Start with sheet of paper, say Dear so and so, some stuff, signed Love your name here. And then to put it in the envelope, you must fold the paper in thirds. Being a very precise lad I wanted it to be exact. So I folded lenghthwise in half, quarters, and then eighths and further subdividing and somehow it sort-of dawned on me that none of those folds was ever going to be exactly one third. I've basically been grumpy ever since.
Artworks
Polyomino Gears and Polycube Machines in the Metareal World
60.0 x 90.0 x 8.0 cm
Looped Video
2024
This piece is a 5 minute loopable animation showing an intriguing imaginary physical system, developing from simple movements to a computational primitive.
In crafting a game/physics engine for my game “Metareal”, I aimed for a brutally simple model. But even the simplest systems may have intriguing consequences. An interesting category of machines turned out to be possible in the Metareal World.
I found myself asking and answering questions about how it all works. How many cycles does each kind of gear use? Can arbitrary movements be induced? In this short un-narrated film I’ll share some of the machines I have discovered, and hopefully provoke you to ask some of these same questions. Or simply enjoy the oddly familiar movements.