GANEIDA'S KNOT.

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Quaker by conviction, mother by default, Celticst through love, Christ follower because I once was lost but now am found...

Friday, January 23, 2009

A little music of the spheres.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh.

Have you seen the stars like this? I don't remember when I first saw this painting but this is how I have always seen the stars ~ larger than they really are, massive swirls that consume the sky, cold as ice.

I love the stars at night in a winter sky. They burn more fiercely then. They fill more of the sky, pressing down on the earth from the vastness of eternity.

In 2006 George Fox did this experiment dividing the orbital periods of the planets in half & half again & again until they were literally audible. [octave equivalence or something of that sort.] No, I don't understand the maths or how it is possible to do something like this but it does intrigue me that it can be done. The resultant piece is known as Carmen of the Spheres. Each planet gets an octaves worth of notes.

The thing is though, much as this intrigues me, much as I will walk somewhere like Springbrook gazing & gazing up at the stars because you can see so many more of them when the sky is not polluted by house lights & street lights & traffic lights & shop lights, the bible talks of this. It talks of the sun pulsing to a beat, the heavens singing long before anyone ever thought to test this theory mathematically by dividing by two.

I know math & music is closely related but this is just insane.

2 comments:

Sandra said...

I live in the country, so the stars are more visible, but not as much so as when you are out in the middle of nowhere. Then it is awe inspiring.

A. said...

The math of it *is* ridiculously insane. Intelligent Designer, indeed.

I - a non-artist - painted this painting for my sister years ago. Blend glitter in with paint, and there you have it. The painting is largely swirls, which anyone can handle. I used black foam for the buildings.

Allison