Graffitti Archaeology and the Best Homework Ever

February 5, 2007 9:15 PM

Cassidy Curtis is responsible for the best overnight homework any teacher has ever received in any course at any level at any place in any subject at any time, ever, ever, ever. If being able to hand-draw Torus in 3-Space renderings isn't enough for you (on skin too) then would you believe a Flash based Graffitti Archaeology application or a Telestereoscope and even a pretty normal blog. (couldn't find his myspace page though...)
posted by DragonBoy (25 comments total)

Very cool!... I absent-mindedly doodle those kinds of images all the time (I always thought of them as elaborate ribbons)... I never knew they had a name.
posted by amyms at 9:22 PM on February 5, 2007

Very, very interesting. Thanks DragonBoy.
posted by tellurian at 9:49 PM on February 5, 2007

Pretty, damn, cool.
posted by captaincrouton at 9:55 PM on February 5, 2007

Also note his Letter-Color Synaesthesia. (I know that B and 2 are reddish-brown, but that's all.) Also, since Cassidy is a good friend from way back, I can vouch that he has forgotten more small interesting facts (which can be assembled into fascinating points) that you'll ever remember. Or vice versa.

Also: Here he is.
posted by argybarg at 10:19 PM on February 5, 2007 [2 favorites]

Wow, argybarg, that was incredibly interesting.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:49 PM on February 5, 2007

Also enjoy the ol' George Dantzig homework story.
posted by MetaMonkey at 11:11 PM on February 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

I assumed Cassidy was a girl and I was happy, because I dig it when chicks are into mathematics like me. Then I saw his pictures.

All the same, pretty cool stuff. He's a hippie mathematician/artist.
posted by Titania at 12:05 AM on February 6, 2007

argybarg - thats awesome!

that could lead to awkward situations though....

cassidy: "hey dave"
mike: "its mike"
cassidy: "sorry, you're colored the same as a dave!"
mike: "...."
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 1:21 AM on February 6, 2007

Nice post, good links! I want a go on the telestereoscope!
posted by asok at 2:19 AM on February 6, 2007

I want a go on the telestereoscope!
Me too! What do you see, a magnified, wider depth-of-field, greater peripheral vision, stereoscope? It's not really explained in any of the links.
posted by tellurian at 4:18 AM on February 6, 2007

Pretty!

[This is a comment by a non-mathematician]
posted by jack_mo at 6:20 AM on February 6, 2007

Here's the telestereoscope faq.

Shall I google anything else for y'all?
posted by pmbuko at 6:44 AM on February 6, 2007

Banchoff's student, Cassidy Curtis, went on to do computer animation for XAOS, an advertising agency in San Francisco, where his credits included the countdown visual sequence for MTV.

I found this a bit deflating. No cure for cancer, then?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:15 AM on February 6, 2007

What? You think MTV isn't working on a cure for cancer?
posted by thekilgore at 7:31 AM on February 6, 2007

That guy is my new hero.
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:53 AM on February 6, 2007

Great post DragonBoy and neat story! Cassidy Curtis' beautiful math art reminds me of ribbon candy. His expression generator of mixed emotions is interesting. Enjoyed the alphabets links on his OtherThings site, especially the Hinglish alphabet. His Graffitti Archaeology site is awesome, what a cool idea

Sites he might like: the evolution of the alphabet animation, Color of My Sound, other math art.
posted by nickyskye at 11:02 AM on February 6, 2007

Those level sets can be generated by a slightly simpler, more symmetric 3-variable function. If you have a good 3-D grapher - Maple or Mathematica both do fine, and I'm sure a zillion other things would do the job, these days - try taking a look at the level sets of:
f(x,y,z)=(x^2+y^2+z^2)-(x^4+y^4+z^4).

The critical levels are nicely placed at 0, 2, 4, and 6. The most interesting level sets occur between 2 and 4, and the most interesting changes in topology occur at 2 and 4. (At 2, there are 6 cones touching at the origin. At 4, there are lots of little cones coming in from the corners along the edges.)
posted by Wolfdog at 11:07 AM on February 6, 2007

His colours are all wrong. A is red, for example. Looking at other people's letter/colour synasthesia relationships makes me feel really odd--almost queasy.

This, however, was a really really interesting post. Thank you. I got to meet someone brilliant today because of it (speaking in the internet "meet" sense of course).
posted by jokeefe at 11:14 AM on February 6, 2007

Here's a quick rendering of the level sets. If I had to produce that by hand, I'd be sunk, even if I knew in advance what the picture was supposed to look like - those hand drawing are amazing, and seriously give me nostalgia for days when textbooks would include hand-drawn diagrams like that. They had character, and the super-precise, neat-and-tidy postscript diagrams we get in every book these days are simultaneously technically impressive and depressingly homogeneous.
posted by Wolfdog at 11:31 AM on February 6, 2007

"(My friend would never have settled for a tattoo that she knew was topologically equivalent to a disk!)"

How cool is that?
posted by Anything at 12:15 PM on February 6, 2007

This guy = genius.
Me = envious.
posted by Anything at 12:23 PM on February 6, 2007

I hope he does some graffiti.
posted by asok at 4:10 PM on February 6, 2007

It's finding esoteric gem posts like these that more than justifies occasionally hitting the 'popular favorites' link. Outstanding in at least 3 dimensions. Thanks DragonBoy!
posted by peacay at 4:27 AM on February 7, 2007

Thanks for all the compliments on this post. I don't understand why there are not more posts like this, it's not hard to use the googles to find additional links supporting what would otherwise be a one link post. In the case of this guy, it was pretty easy to hit on 'best of the web' material because he's doing some pretty amazing stuff.

Still, thanks for the props.
posted by DragonBoy at 7:29 AM on February 7, 2007

I feel stoopid.
posted by puddinghead at 8:43 AM on February 7, 2007