For Hyon Gak Sunim
Similar Triangles Poem done in January of 2021
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Pandemic Meditation Spring of 2020
This piece is a similar triangles poem that was inspired by the stress experienced during the pandemic of 2020. In January of 2022, The Journal for Humanistic Mathematics will be publishing a paper that analyzes this piece using the language of cognitive linguistics. For the Rule 42 show I am including a link to the submission here: A Cognitive View Of Pandemic Meditation
The Caveat of Capitalism
This piece was done in the spring of 2020 and inspired by the politics of the day. It uses the similar triangles form.
In addition I spoke in detail about this piece published in Karie Ross's book, Artists, Art and Story. Purchase it here: clickhere
Shoebox Projects Call and Responce - Spring of 2020
This work was a collaboration between myself and Coleman Griffith sponsored by Shoeboxprojects of Los Angeles California. The method we used was that Coleman provided me a photo and I manipulated it and provided a mathematical poem to accompany the new image. I used the similar triangles form for all of the math poems.
Disengendered
The mathematical visual poem titled “Disengendered” is a pencil drawing done around
January 2020. While in Oklahoma, a state known for conservative views, I was inspired to make
this piece during a discussion with an Oklahoma friend of mine who shared her experience with
me about one of her close friends. For clarity, I will refer to her friend as “TJ”. My friend
expressed that TJ was struggling with a gender transition. It was made known that TJ was born
with both sets of genitalia and yet, was forced to grow up as a girl due to TJ's mother cutting off
TJ's male genitalia while as a baby. When TJ became around thirty years old TJ was confused
due to being convinced that TJ’s mother made a mistake and TJ is a man. Yet, TJ had all this
experience as a girl and has female genitalia as well.
While viewing and trying to understand TJ from a distance one experiences this person as normal and well-adjusted yet, the closer one gets to TJ the more confused one gets concerning TJ’s gender struggle. This would not normally be a problem if not for also being empathetic to the pain and struggle that TJ is experiencing.
I have mapped this experience visually in my drawing, for at a distance, the drawing looks fine -- even to the point that you can tell TJ is wearing glasses. Yet, up close the drawing is confusing and hard to tell if it depicts a person at all. In this work, I was inspired to express my compassion for TJ in the struggle he is experiencing in his transition by creating visual and mathematical metaphors pointing to metamorphic hope.
The mathematical poetic form used is a "Similar Triangles Poem" and you can find tools to understand the mechanics of this form I have provided a link below that provides a deep analysis of how Similar Triangles Poem functions. A translation from mathematics to a lexical expression reveals the poem can be read as "The Lost Soul is to a Cosmic Nursery as Being On An Ocean Raft is to Times Square. (NYC) or it can be read as The Lost Soul is to Being On An Ocean Raft as the Cosmic Nursery is to Times Square.
Poem for Niels Bohr
I have been really behind on my blog and am trying to catch up. This piece is a similar triangles poem done in December of 2019
