

Dürer's polyhedron: theories that explain Melencolia's crazy cube - ColinWright
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/dec/03/durers-polyhedron-5-theories-that-explain-melencolias-crazy-cube

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ertdfgcb
I have a friend who's an artist, and he loves putting random weird things or
vague symbology that doesn't particularly mean anything it his pictures.
People always assume it does mean something, but since it's so vague (and he
never tells them what it "means") they can never nail down exactly what it is.
He's always praised as a deep and thoughtful artist because of it, and I think
it's directly responsible for much of his success.

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AnthonBerg
Where it gets further interesting is also here: Where do the random weird
things come from?

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ertdfgcb
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but the way he tells it he literally makes
up random stuff that looks good and tosses it in there, so I guess his
subconscious?

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AnthonBerg
Basically. Unfiltered outputs from the connection machine based on
environmental triggers, past memories, previously consumed culture, random
hardwiring in the individual etc etc. These outputs _have meaning_ and can be
very interesting, and can have a strong and broad context embedded in them but
one that is hard to pinpoint. In a word - mysterious.

People also have varyingly interesting random generators. The artist's
consciousness is absolutely not necessary for art to be interesting.

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smokel
Given that it is an engraving, it might also be a plan for sharpening a burin.

There are many kinds of burins -- for a general impression of what I am after,
see
[http://www.google.com/patents/US7032586](http://www.google.com/patents/US7032586)

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benbreen
I love suggestion #4 (the Freemasonry/magic square one) but I suspect that the
simpler first explanation is on the right track. This quibble from the
article:

"But did Dürer study crystals? A systematic mathematical description of
crystals begins only in the 17th century, so this theory comes at least 100
years too late."

Is really not particularly convincing when we consider what a polymath and all
around genius Dürer was, and how interested he was in fine observations of
nature (cf "The Great Patch of Turf.")

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rbdn
Seems like a compositional counterweight to the perfectly smooth sphere below.

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DanBC
Has anyone tried re-mapping the textures from the sphere amd the object onto a
flat surface?

