Autodesk Gallery: Nature by the numbers Exhibit

The Autodesk Gallery at One Market in San Francisco celebrates design — the process of taking a great idea and turning it into a reality. With about 60 different exhibits regularly on display that showcase the innovative work of Autodesk customers, the gallery illustrates the role technology plays in great design and engineering. Autodesk Gallery Ambassadors conduct gallery tours as a sideline to their day jobs. The tours provide employees with opportunities to practice public speaking in front of small groups.

With regard to the Nature by the numbers exhibit:

People

• John Edmark // more

Software

• Autodesk Maya // more

Hardware

• Stratasys Objet Connex 500 3D Printer // more

The Fibonacci sequence — where the next number is found by adding the two numbers before — is nature's organizing pattern.

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The Fibonacci sequence is everywhere, e.g., pine cones. leaf configurations, flower petal patterns, and sunflower seeds.

image sources: Biology Stack Exchange, Pinterest, Go Figure, eCampus, and Wikipedia

John Edmark is an artist, designer, inventor, and educator. He teaches at Stanford University. The Autodesk Pier 9 Workshop has an artist-in-residence program. While in-residence, John celebrated the patterns underlying space and growth by employing precise mathematics in this 3D printed Bloom.

His previous work was all done with laser cutters, but his time at Pier 9 was his first real experience with 3D printers.

John describes his work as a fascination with spirals because they represent that one can never return to the same place:

John has even documented how he created the gallery exhibit with an Instructable:

The gallery exhibit features a sculpture that spins under a strobe light to produce the illusion of motion, similar to how a Victorian Zoetrope works. The light flashes as the piece turns 137.5 degrees — a Fibonacci-related measurement called the Golden Angle — unveiling surprising structures hidden in our natural world.

source: Wikipedia

Thanks to the Autodesk Gallery team for the descriptive text for this blog post.

The Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco is open to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. There is a guided tour on Wednesdays at 12:30 pm and a self-guided audio tour available anytime. Admission is free. Visit us.

Math is alive in the lab.