Symmetry

[Guest guest]

I like the way you've started writing your name -- it has rotational

symmetry. Why is the human brain set up to appreciate symmetry?

Perhaps because 'good' genes are usually connected with symmetrical

facial features? I prefer to think that god wanted someone to invent

kaleidoscopes....

This goes along with some thoughts I've been having.... how

interesting the way the spirit moves among all. And wondering who

determined that symmetry in facial features was more beautiful than

not... And wondered if the rest of the animal kingdom also pick mates

or make preferences based on symmetry.

Lynette

[Guest guest]

Hi Lynette,

 

I think the symmetry thing comes down to natural selection. I

bet animals do it too... though they'll have other things they look

for, too. (Same as we humans do.)

 

What's even odder about human faces is the way the ratios in

the 'ideal' face are related (can't quite remember how -- can

someone help me out here?) to the Fibonacci sequence, which

shows up everywhere in nature. And forms based on the

Fibonacci sequence (such as sunflower heads) have rotational

symmetry and are fractal.

 

Maths and nature are both wonderful, but I love it most when

they meet!

 

gill

 

 

This goes along with some thoughts I've been having.... how

interesting the

way the spirit moves among all. And wondering who determined

that symmetry in

facial features was more beautiful than not... And wondered if

the rest of

the animal kingdom also pick mates or make preferences based

on symmetry.

 

Lynette

[Guest guest]

>> Why is the human brain set up to appreciate symmetry? <<

I don't know either...but to make it completely personal...when I was

in art school, one of the big NO NOs was symmetry in your paintings

or drawings. Without going into art history or the politics of

university art teaching, I had a tough time. I kept getting ideas

that wanted to express themselves...you guessed it, in symmetry. Each

time, I was put down in some way. Unfortunately, I wasn't strong

enough to stand up to the art school's.

After I finished school, I did some painting that was dirivitive of

this paradigm, and then I quit doing any "art" for ten years. (As it

turned out, this was the only way I could divorce myself from the

paradigm. But I did do alot of songwriting during this time.) I

couldn't, of course, totally quit, because that would be denying my

identity. So I started doing these little metaphoric drawings with

magic markers (a non "serious art" tool, so I didn't have to belong

to the old paradigm). They had elements of symmetry and incorporated

alot of aspects of my life experience and interests: quilts,

archetypal imagery, the Tarot...

When I once again wanted to begin to do "serious" art (i.e., art that

I would actually show people), I relied on the automatic techniques

of the surrealists to get me going. This involved alot of randomly

splashing diluted acrylic paint onto umprimed canvas. As this work

evolved, I would look at the splashes to see if they were "saying"

anything to me about how they wanted to evolve. Then, intuitively, I

would begin to enhance certain parts of the painting, to begin

bringing out imagery. Often I would cut the canvas apart and put it

back together. Anyhow, the result of all this was a series of what I

called "Small Icons" that were totally symmetrical. My first show of

these pieces went so well that I sold nearly everything in the show.

So Ha! I say to paradigms, even those which purport to be open-ended

and unconventional and ground-breaking (which the art paradigm in

college did)... The work that evolved out of this also was very

symmetrical (a series of highly symbolic mixed media paintings and

then a series of mixed media pieces on (tree) bark, mounted on pine

panels, and now a beginning series of "spirit" ladders). For me, I

think what I respond to in symmetry wherever I see it (and there is

lots of it in nature, of course) is the sense of Presence, which is

sometimes heart wrenchingly profound. I think of Yantras and mandalas

in this context. The symmetry and the imagery operate as a doorway to

the Sacred. Shanti ~ Linda