New Islamic-style Trellis-likeTile!

I was gazing at my RL painting of the E8 Polytope and I perceived an octagon and a unicursal octagram embedded in the center:

That got me thinking.  Could that shape be used to tile space?

That thought inspired me to try to build a tiled space using prims and this is the result:

Islamic-style Trellis-like Tile made from prims.

This is about 1,000 prims and can conceivably be used for wall dividers or latticeworks in Second Life and other Virtual Worlds.

Scope Cleaver and company check out the new tiling.

What else will I find in the E8?

E8 Painting in Real Life!

Lately,  I’ve been rendering some of my RL work in Second Life.

This time, it’s going the other way.  I’m painting a painting in Real Life based on some of the work I’ve been doing in Second Life.

I decided to attempt a 3 foot by 3 foot painting of the E8 Polytope.  In Second Life, my E8 Polytope is three dimensional (and very complex.)  In fact, the latest version has 6,672 prims.  (Which makes it hard to find it a home on a 15,000 prim sim.)

Without further ado, here is the front view of the Concentric Circles Rotation of the 4_21 Gossett E8 Polytope:

3 foot by 3 foot painting of the E8 Polytope

Electrum Spiral @ Caerleon Art Collective

I’m working on this new thing.  It started out as a sketch on graph paper in RL.  Then I turned it into a 3 foot by 3 foot painting:

Original Spiral Fractal painting in RL

Then I rendered it in prims in SL in 2D.

Then I turned it into 3D in SL.

Soror Nishi asks if I could put some steps up to the fractal.

At the suggestion of Desdemona Enfield, I knocked out some of the cubes and this is the result:

We put those cubes back in and it starts to look like a twisted Mondrian painting:

Copyright © Wizard Gynoid 2009

I asked Xenophile Neurocam if he knew anything about this fractal.  Because it’s definitely not the Golden Spiral.  It’s not derived from a Golden Rectangle and it doesn’t encode the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Series.

My good friend Xeno is so smart.  He said look into something called the “Pythagoras Tree.”

Bingo!  Discovered by Albert E. Bosman (1891-1961), a dutch mathematics teacher, in 1942.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras_tree

This version is different from all other variations I’ve seen of the Pythagoras Tree, so I’m calling it an “Electrum Spiral” because it’s definitely not the Golden Spiral.  Electrum is an alchemical mixture of Gold and Silver and the other five classical metals.

You can see it at my new parcel on the Caerleon Art Collective sim, courtesy of Georg Janick:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caerleon%20Art%20Collective/212/120/27

Evidence of Extropy is in the Building.

Wizzy keeps building geometric objects of more and more intricacy and complexity.  Wizzy’s building is therefore necessarily Extropic.

6672 prim E8 Polytope

This is my latest project.  A 6672 prim E8 Polytope.  This one is more representative of the E8 than any of my previous attempts.  It took several attempts to successfully rez this object, and even so the sim creaked and groaned.

This particular rotation of the E8 Polytope is important because it shows *all* 240 of the vertices.  Each vertice can be seen above as a meeting of edge struts.

From this angle, we can see a clear hole on this axis going straight down through the object.  When flattened down to two dimensions this object would look this:

The 2D graph commonly recognized as the E8 Polytope

This 2D version has 240 recognizable vertices or nodes.  If Second Life had less perspective programmed into our view, from this axis or view we could see the object like this.

Some of you might wonder why I am so obviously obsessed with this object.  It is considered to be the most beautiful and elegant geometric object known to mathematicians.  That alone is probably reason enough…

But as I proceed with this obsession, at each step I learn more and more.  I gain a more intuitive grasp of what this thing is all about.  Each new discovery is a wonder and a joy.

Another axis of symmetry reveals itself

Where do I go from here?

The direction of higher complexity leads from the eighth dimension up to all 248 dimensions of the E8 Group.

The direction of lower complexity leads downward to the G2.  The cube-like, hexagonal symmetry of the G2 lends itself to demonstrations of how quarks and the strong force relate.

Next stop, G2.

Second Life CEO Mark Linden likes me!

Back in October 2008, I received an IM from someone named M Linden.  He told me he was looking at some of my work and wanted to buy some.  I asked him where he was and he said he was at Rezzable Visions.  So I immediately dropped everything and TP’d over there.

Chatting with M Linden

M Linden happens to be Mark Kingdon in Real Life, and he is the Chief Executive Officer of Second Life!

Luckily, I knew that when he IM’d me.

I helped him buy some of my stuff, and he said at the time that he wanted to put them up in his own personal sculpture garden in SL.  I went looking for his land at one point but it happens to be on protected Linden land, so I couldn’t get in to see what he did with it.

I thought that was the end of that.

Yesterday, Torley Linden posted a Tweet (on Twitter) about a Flickr picture of M Linden’s SL office.  I was ecstatic to find a picture of two of my sculptures floating over his office:

Two of my geometric sculptures floating over M Linden's office in SL.

I then went through all of Mr. CEO Linden’s posts on Flickr and found some more good shots of his visit to my Rezzable Visions build.

"I love this. Bought one from the creator and it's sitting on my roof :)"

Crashing Rezzable Alpha Open Sim Grid

My marching orders are to try to crash Rezzable’s Alpha Open Sim Grid.  So I set about to do that with a passion once scripting was turned on on my two regions.  Somehow Foolish Frost fixed the script engine, commenting that Rezzable Open Sim doesn’t use the Xengine script engine.  In that case, I would expect this grid to behave differently from the Reaction Grid.  So far, all behavior seems very similar.

Rezzing the E8 Concentric Circles Projection on Rezzable Alpha Grid

Next, I tried to “stretch” the object as large as I could, given the limitations of the Linden Lab viewer.  Initially I had a lot of problems getting the viewer to allow me to stretch.  It was acting kludgie and I think it might have had to do with the sim stats.  Check out the sim speed:

Note the Frame and Sim Times

After I relogged, I was able to “stretch” (after the selection tool accepted all 2956 prims).  With the ten meter limit on prim size however, it didn’t stretch much.

Stretching the object

After I stretched it to maximum, I moved it straight down to ground level.  This is easier said than done, because you’ve selected about 3,000 prims to move and the sim creaks and groans and complains.  It’s not done easily, let me just say that.

E8 Concentric Circles on Wizzy sim & Desde sim in the background.

Remarkably, with almost 3,000 active scripts on the region, I was able to rez a prim and create and compile a script afterwards.  Only one anomaly was noticed – I couldn’t “take” a prim that I should have been able to.  Instead I had to delete it and then restore it.  This small anomaly might count toward “crashing” the sim, but so far Rezzable Alpha has been resistant to my banging on it.  Will continue to do so tomorrow.

Goth Wizzy on Wizzy sim with Desde Sim in the background.

Building on Wizzy sim @ Rezzable Open Sim

RightAsRain Rimbaud gave me two regions to build on the Rezzable Open Sim.  I’ve been testing it out and it seems to be almost identical to the Reaction Grid.  I can get to the Rezzable grid direct using a new shortcut for the SL viewer, but I would really like to use the Hippo Open Sim viewer.  The main reason for this is that the viewer allows building 256 meter objects (provided the server code allows it.)  I actually was able to log in with the Hippo viewer once.  But not since then.

I did a little testing and found that scripts weren’t working on my Wizzy region.  This is consistent with the behavior I observed at Reaction Grid.  With Open Sim 0.6.1 the script engine keeps breaking and is unreliable.  The engine can’t seem to handle much of a load.  On Reaction grid it would slow down and break after I rezzed about 3000 objects with active scripts.  I selected and “Inactivated” the scripts, but even so the script engine broke down.  Some regions continue to work though.  The behavior is inconsistent.  This is the issue: http://opensimulator.org/mantis/view.php?id=2853

Also the LSL function ( llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());) that can be used to delete out the active scripts from the objects doesn’t work in Open Sim 0.6.1 or is not enabled.  This is a serious bug and if fixed could be a workaround for the major issue above.

I went to the Rezzable 5 region and found that scripts were working there.  So I rezzed a complex geometric object (Compound 5 Octahedra) and added a rotation script, then copied it and rezzed it on Wizzy.  And there it is now.

Rezzing a Compound 5 Octahedra @ Rezzable Open Sim

Linking Prims and Changing Colors

Rezzed on Wizzy Sim @ Rezzable Grid

My Goth Outfit

I'm a Goth!

MiniMap Reveals Symmetry

I rezzed only the vertices of the new “Concentric Circles” rotation of the E8 Polytope on the new Soror sim at Reaction Grid.  Then stretched the vertices out to fill the sim.

The scale is so big (200 meters in diameter) that my computer had a hard time rendering them so that I can see the symmetries.  I was looking for that axis that reveals the concentric circles.

By accident, I happened to look at the mini map.  Lo and behold, there is the symmetry.  The order is revealed from the seeming chaos:

MiniMap from Reaction Grid reveals Symmetry

Not Possible in Second Life – NPISL

G2 Proto gave me four regions on the Reaction Open Sim Grid to build and display my E8 Polytopes.  So I rezzed the newest E8  “Concentric Circles”  on the Wizzy sim and the older E8  “4_21 Gossett”   on the Xeno sim next door.  I stretched them so that they almost fill a whole sim each.

Sim-Sized E8 Polytope

This is not possible in Second Life due to the stretch limitation of ten meters.  The circular base under the E8 in the photo above is 200 meters in diameter.

Wizzy's 4 sims @ Reaction Grid

This is the way the four sims appear on the Open Sim map.  Obviously, there’s a problem with the rendering program, but it gives you an idea of the scale.

Two Sim-Sized E8 Polytopes - on the left "Concentric Circles" - on the right "4_21 Gossett"

Reaction Grid (http://reactiongrid.com) seems to have a working relationship with Intel and Microsoft.  According to G2 Proto, Intel has developed a strategy to increase the concurrent avatars on an Open Sim to 150.  If true, this would be the long-awaited solution to the laggy sim.  And he says that Microsoft is bringing their Open Sims to the Reaction Grid.  This may mean some good traffic to see the E8 Polytope works that I have done in collaboration with Desdemona Enfield.

Go and check it out and set your draw distance to 512.  I recommend downloading the Hippo Open Sim viewer (from http://reactiongrid.com).  Then you will have to add the Reaction Grid to the list of Grids.

Check out the new E8

The exhibit is open now, until the end of February.

Go here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Butler%20College%20IT/198/75/1001