| | Themes and Variations

"Designed objects, Brock writes, can be broken down into 'themes' and 'transformations.' A theme is a motif, such as an S-curve; a transformation might see that curve appear elsewhere in the design, but stretched, rotated 90 degrees, mirrored, or otherwise reworked. Aesthetic satisfaction comes from an apprehension of how those themes and transformations relate to each other, or of what Brock calls their 'relative complexity.' Basically-- and this is the nub of it-- 'if the theme is simple, then we are most satisfied when its echoes are complex... and vice versa.'" Related material:Theme

and Variations

See also earlier tributes to Hollywood Game Theory
and Hollywood Religion:

For some variations on the above checkerboard theme, see Finite Relativity and A Wealth of Algebraic Structure.
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| | Posted 2/22/2009 4:07 PM - 69 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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