Event 1 | Gerald De Jong: MATH & ART

“Needle Tower.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Sept. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_Tower.

Gerald de Jong produces fascinating pieces of artwork resembling Kenneth Snelson's Needle Tower using tensegrity, which is a way to hold structure by only tension and compression. In fact, as he explained in his event, Gerald de Jong was initially inspired to work with tensegrity after seeing Needle Tower. I personally found it very interesting how two seemingly opposite elements, compression and tension (like push and pull), combine to produce myriad different configurations of tensegrity art. It reminded me of how computer science starts from 0 and 1 (emptiness and existence) to produce a whole world of mathematics and computer technologies. The complexity deriving from the minimal elements that we can easily understand seems to give me a hint of the structure of the universe that perhaps gave us the perception of beauty and sense of aesthetics through evolution. An interesting trivia that further illustrates the interconnections of tensegrity is that our body derives its structural integrity from tensegrity of muscles and tendons, not from rigidity of bones as one would intuitively guess.

de Jong, Gerald. “Halo by Crane” , https://pretenst.com/app/#construction;Halo-by-Crane.

de Jong, Gerald. “Arch” , https://https://pretenst.com/app/#construction;Arch.

That many of de Jong's works are generated by computer algorithms running a sort of natural selection and evolution of tensegrity structures to find the physically viable ones is another indication that art and science are not separate but deeply intertwined. Bringing awe-inspiring beauty as a messenger from the world of tensegrity, Gerald de Jong is definitely a member of the Third Culture as described by Professor Vesna. 

Imagine building a physical structure by tensegrity. The opposing forces of tension and compression would resist coming together and holding meaningful shapes if one blindly forced them together, but with some care and ingenuity those two elements can be brought together to create interesting shapes. The situation is similar with art and science: if one misunderstands the other but still tries to blindly force them together in one place, we would only end up with friction and misunderstanding lamented by C P Snow in his essay and mocked by Alan Sokal with his hoax. 

Snow, C. P. “The Two Cultures.” Leonardo, vol. 23, no. 2/3, The MIT Press, 1990, pp. 169–73, https://doi.org/10.2307/1578601.

Sokal, Alan D., and J. Bricmont. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science. St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, The MIT Press, 2001, pp. 121–25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577014.

The event took place over Zoom video conference, and Gerald de Jong talked about his work in his studio while also allowing us to see the pieces displayed in the studio through Zoom as well as by QR code which led us to his website displaying the corresponding virtual models.