Symmetry and notation: Regularity and symmetry in notated computer graphics

✍ Scribed by John G. Harries

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 1024 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0898-1221
• DOI: 10.1016/0898-1221(86)90156-2

✦ Synopsis

A comprehensive cognitive method for dealing with shapes and their formal organisation in visual art is derived from the model of movement which finds its expression in Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation. In this application, shapes are conceived as being swept out by movements which are analysed and recorded in the notation. This method is quantitative and ideally suited for computer input, while the computer is ideally suited for carrying out in detail and with precision the instructions compactly expressed in the symbol code of the notation. Using computer and notation together, regularities and symmetries can be observed in displayed shapes or sequences of shapes, and in their notation; some of these exemplify static symmetry, others dynamic symmetry, and others again, combinations of assymmetry in individual shapes together with symmetry among variants of the motif, related through the (symmetrical) structure of the process from which they arise. Families of transformations of a motif can be generated, which possess a unity that may be intuitively perceptible and will always be objectively verifiable.