Fourfield (Fourth Field): Computers, Art & the 4th Dimension

Fourfield (Fourth Field): Computers, Art & the 4th Dimension

An artist blurs the boundaries between art and science and probes into the realms of relativity, non-Euclidean geometry, hypercubes, and quasicrystals in an effort to depict a fourth dimension. Shades of the Fifties: Red/blue cardboard glasses, cubist forms, and science fiction cyberspace are the first things one encounters in this diverting work. On closer inspection, they offer an interesting entree into an extradimensional world and the exhilarating and intriguing new ways it can be depicted in art and science with the help of the computer. The mathematical themes may at first be daunting, but the enthusiasm of the artist/author carries the reader, hesitantly perhaps, into expanded space and eventually into a fluid, dynamic view of the universe and the self. The application of new computer techniques in art and architecture are examined, but Robbin's work is essentially a personal account of a philosophical and intellectual journey into the fourth dimension. The bibliography ranges from "Flatland" to "The Principle of Relativity," the glossary from "Big Bang" to "Wormhole": evidence of a complex investigation by a creative mind. Although clearly not to everyone's taste, this book is well worth the effort for those to whom the computer age is not a threat but a promise. - Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.