Category: Strange Geometries
‘Vertices’
Vertices are points where particles collide and interact.
What is a vertex?
‘Mathematics and computer science[edit]
- Vertex (computer graphics), a point in space with additional attributes
- Vertex (curve), a local extreme point of curvature
- Vertex (geometry), a point where higher-dimensional geometric objects meet
- Vertex (graph theory), a node in a graph
- Vertex (topography), a data point in certain geographic information systems
- Vertex of a representation, a certain type of subgroup in finite group theory
Physics[edit]
- Vertex (physics), a point where particles collide and interact
- Vertex function, describing the interaction between a photon and an electron
- Vertex model in statistical mechanics, a discrete model of a physical system in which weights are associated with vertices of a grid graph
- Vertex operator algebra in conformal field theory’
Let’s converse?
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‘Vertices’
a conversation between points on the globe in digital space
reception
Monday 9 August 2021
9pm USEST
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to join the zoom conversation
thank you
Vertices
I just wanted to make a point.
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‘Vertices’
an online exhibition
in S P A C E
opening reception
Monday 9 August 2021
9pm USEST
***
to join the zoom conversation
become a member of S P A C E
thank you
Issue #133
Social sustainability
Since arriving in Vietnam and finding myself looking around me, mostly just people watching, for most of most days from the time I got to Saigon in September up until a few weeks ago when the city closed up for social distancing, I have been seeing people get very tired form a work culture that, I’m really dismayed to find, when I see it, all around me, obsessing about the dollar and sacrificing just about everything else towards the goal of making a few bucks. I want to make something new, next.
A social enterprise, without the BS factor that you and I both know that a lot of companies use to try to market themselves. I’m tired of seeing people I know and whose work I value being exploited and overused, and they come back, so tired, so fatigued, that the Art of everything becomes so remote, so lost, so… irrelevant… that it breaks up the feelings of wanting to keep questing, keep learning, keep inquiring, and keep making. With me. Selfishly, I want to make more art with more creative people, and that’s why I want to get started on a new venture.
Maybe something like Fare Start in Seattle, where people grow their own food, and find jobs in kitchens that employ those who need to learn new skills, and then, voila, they make a restaurant and serve people and generate income, from that. I don’t know. It’s a lot of thinking, right now, and less action. Naturally. We’re in a semi-lockdown phase, so I’ve got time to dream up a new thing. But yeah. I want to keep writing and talking more about Social Sustainability here on the blog and in real life when I can. It’s best if it’s in real life, because you know, that’s where you learn a lot from the indirect nature of how humans communicate. Let me see what I can do, meantime, though, to teach myself what this is and set up something, when I get to the next spot, here in Vietnam.
For now, this.
Snippets.
‘One of the major reasons behind the recent state of fatigue among Vietnamese people is burnout—a condition in which a person feels exhausted and exhibits reduced productivity following prolonged stress,’ writes Tuoi Tre News in a story called, ‘Burnout, workplace stress put damper on success in Vietnam’ published on May 11, 2021.
It checks with our own observations living in Saigon during a difficult time when many young people feel the pressure to support not only their own lives in the city, but often, others back home in places far from here where money is scarce. And even more so, given the pandemic’s drastic effects on the economy worldwide.
A few notes from the article..
‘More and more patients have sought professional aid in this matter. The psychology department of the University Medical Center Ho Chi Minh City welcomes a daily average of eight to nine people from different age groups who have burnout problems.
Where did the joy go? ‘A Vietnamese woman named M. has spent the last 20 years devoting herself to work. She moved up the ladder from a newbie staff member to manager and she currently acts as the deputy chief executive officer of a technology company. She has found herself up to her ears in work in recent years. Her work hours start at 7:00 am and she does not sign off until very late in the evening. Phone calls and messages constantly appear, keeping her absolutely occupied. Instead of bragging about the joy she has, the 45-year-old woman confessed otherwise despite her career success. “I’ve felt really tired, as if my head was stiff. I wake up every morning feeling scared for the coming day,” she said. “I’m scared of everything. I’m really down spirited. The internal conflict grows day by day.”… T.A.T. is a 26-year-old secretary working for a Japanese firm in Ho Chi Minh City. Her first days at work were a wonder, but three months into the job revealed to her that the work did not live up to her expectations. She has been under constant stress. “I feel that all of my energy is drained out the moment a new day begins,” she said. “It’s like butterflies in my stomach. My heart beats faster.”
Do you have a story to share about your own experiences of work, working a lot, working so much you don’t know what it was like to live a life where there was something besides work in it? If yes, get in touch. We’re going to curate a special exhibition of stories and images around this exact theme: Fatigue.
Blue notes
I like this.
Kinda jazzy.
I found a time machine
As part of our new phase of fourth-wave pandemic precautions, we’re not making salons or workshops in real life here in Vietnam for the time being.
That means it’s a time to go back into the internet. So, we’re setting up a new set of tracks for S P A C E for Summer and Autumn collections. For example, this is a snippet from a popular science fiction work, ‘The Time Machine.’
Never read it, before. But, having just now started it, (see below, with the Introduction), am happy. Isn’t it grand that this first part is about… whoa!, the Fourth Dimension! S P A C E quests S P A C E, and A. Spaice loves this stuff. Naturally. It is the nature of geometers to be curious about things. So here we are. And here we go. Gonna keep diving into the internet, maybe, to share more. Strange Geometries, these.
The Time Machine
Words H. G. Wells
I. Introduction
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burnt brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision.
And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.
“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”
“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.”
“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.
“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.”
“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All real things—”
“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can aninstantaneous cube exist?”
“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.
“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?”
Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in fourdirections: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions*, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.
There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.”
“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”
“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,” continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. “Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?”
“I have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.
“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry.