Seifert Surface breathes (real) life into virtual content

Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman), a mathematician and also a bodacious creator of both virtual and real math-inspired art, is doing so many new and fun things that I had to get out of my blogging funk long enough to post this.

Three years ago, and over on his New World Notes blog, Hamlet Au did a great write-up on Seifert's recreation of Robert A. Heinlein's fictional "Crooked House" in Second Life, a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract. "--And He Built a Crooked House" is a scifi short story about a mathematically inclined architect who "has what he thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs."

Now Seifert has shot two videos in-world so that even non-Second Life'rs can have a look and understand what it's like to walk inside it. It's 'the awesome,' don't you think?





And just in time for Christmas shopping, eight of Seifert's math-inspired investigations and sculptures have come to life, thanks to Shapeways' 3D printing. I'm buying as soon as I finish this blogpost.


Sphere Autoglyph


Torus Autoglyph

Prices range from $12.95 to $57.29.

Own the universe - and a piece of Second Life - in Real Life

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

This mathematical structure - known as the E8 Polytope created by Wizard Gynoid in Second Life® with the guidance of renown physicist Garrett Lisi (and sometimes avatar, Garrett Netizen)... is now available for purchase in Real Life.

The virtual version consists of 6,672 prims that were generated via script by Wizard with the assistance of Desdemona Enfield and Nand Nerd. Given its complexity, it seemed unlikely that its recreation in Real Life would be possible, barring enormous expense.

Now art, math and 3D printing artist Bathsheba Grossman has done it.


The 80mm glass cube will cost $72 USD and will be available as of July 10, 2009

Batsheba used Wizard's mathematical data for the crystal visualization and explains: "This 3D projection is notable for showing all 240 vertices, arranged in the concentric circles that appear in the common 2D "spirograph" rendering of this polytope." She adds that if Garrett Lisi's unified field theory is true, it "would mean that it explains most aspects of the observable universe. Here's a handy model for pondering the possibility."

In Lisi's seminal work from which these mathematical virtual creations stem, "Theory of Everything," the E8 Polytope may at last reveal the link between gravity and the other fundamental forces of nature.

"It has all 240 vertices and if you look straight down from the top, the zenith downwards, you will see a hole through the middle. If it were flattened, it would form the perfect spirograph," Wizard explained.

Here is a TED talk recorded in February, 2008, in which Lisi unenviably attempts to get us up to speed on his unified field theory in just 18 minutes.



See also:
Universe in the Metaverse by Hamlet Au, New World Notes