The artist on his current exhibition "Poesie der Logik“
June 19 – September 5, 2009
Selected texts by Archilochos and Sappho – these earliest known poets of Ancient Greece – provided me with the poetic template for their transcription into a geometrical “Poetry of Logic”. Through a simple geometric alphabet, based on the rectangle and its even partitions, a basic arithmetical operation, I transferred the texts from Latin to the Geometric alphabet. The translation of their texts resulted in a new, visual appearance, obtaining an additional dimension of perception. The identical presentation of both designs – Latin alphabet text above the geometrical text – within one object, allows the viewer an immediate understanding of the encoding transfer methods.
People in Ancient Greece also developed the foundations of Western mathematics and geometry. The prime number phenomenon, already recognized by Greek mathematicians, still remains a major challenge to be resolved. The Polish mathematician and physicist Stanislaw Ulam discovered, in a playful manner, the striking diagonal arrangement of prime numbers on a spiral of all integers with the number “1” at its very center. My installation “The Spiral of Stanislaw Ulam” visualizes this fascinating phenomenon.